KABUL, Jan. 19 (Xinhua) -- Russia, Pakistan and China held a trilateral meeting in Moscow in late December 2016 to discuss the lingering conflict in Afghanistan and try to find a solution to the protracted turbulence in the South Asian region.
The participants in the trilateral conference, besides calling for a negotiated settlement on the Afghan crisis, had also appealing for a delisting of Taliban leaders from the United Nations' terrorist black list.
This was the first time since the withdrawal of the former Soviet Union forces from Afghanistan in 1998 that Russia had held such a conference on Afghanistan in a bid to find a solution to the Afghan imbroglio.
Similarly, before hosting the trilateral conference on Afghanistan in Moscow, Russian special envoy to Afghanistan Zamir Kablov, according to media reports, had confirmed his country's contact with the Taliban, advocating that the Taliban as a potent force can beat the emerging Islamic State threats along the border with the Russian allies of the Central Asian states bordering Afghanistan.
"The Moscow-held trilateral talks on Afghanistan would have no impact on reducing the war and militancy in Afghanistan," political expert Nazari Pariani told Xinhua.
Pariani, who is the editor-in-chief of the Daily Mandegar newspaper, also said that the Russian contact with the Taliban would further complicate the already complicated peace process in Afghanistan.
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