The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia Sergei Lavrov arrived in China to attend a two-day summit on Afghanistan, the Russian embassy in Beijing announced today.
This is the first visit to China of the head of the Kremlin diplomacy after the invasion of the Russian army in Ukraine on February 24. Beijing has refrained from condemning the Russian military attack, while criticizing Western sanctions against Russia.
Mr Lavrov has arrived in Tunisia (east), where a summit of the seven Afghanistan’s neighbors (excluding Russia and China: Pakistan, Iran, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan) will be held by tomorrow. reported the Russian embassy via Weibo.
The head of the Taliban regime’s diplomacy, which regained power in Afghanistan last August, Amir Khan Mutaki, is also expected to attend the summit, according to China’s state-run New China News Agency.
At the same time, a meeting of the “consultation mechanism” for Afghanistan will be held, with the participation of diplomats from China, Russia, Pakistan, as well as the United States, according to Beijing.
The talks will take place a week after Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited Kabul. It was his first visit to the country since fundamentalist Islamists seized power in Kabul last year.
China shares a 76-kilometer border with Afghanistan in a high-altitude mountainous region.
Beijing has made no secret of its concerns over the years that the neighboring country could become a backbone for separatists and Islamists of the Uighur Muslim minority, the ethnic group that makes up the majority of the population in the vast Chinese province of Xinjiang.
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