Respect Afghan sovereignty, guide Taliban: China to US

Pointing to the fundamental changes in Afghanistan situation, China has urged the international community including the United States to make contact with the Taliban and “guide it actively.” During a telephonic conversation with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi discussed the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and stressed that America’s hasty troop withdrawal may provide terrorist groups an opportunity to “regroup and come back stronger” as “facts had proven” that the Afghanistan war had failed to achieve its stated goals.

“While respecting the sovereignty of Afghanistan, the US should take concrete action to help Afghanistan fight terrorism and stop violence, rather than playing double standards or fighting terrorism selectively,” Wang said in his second phone conversation with Blinken in two weeks.

Wang and Blinken also discussed bilateral ties which are under strain due to a host of issues, according to China’s Xinhua news agency.

The US needs to work with the international community to provide Afghanistan urgently-needed economic, livelihood and humanitarian assistance, Wang said. For peaceful reconstruction of Afghanistan, the country’s new political structure also needs help to maintain normal operation of government institutions, social security and stability, and curb currency depreciation and inflation, Wang added.

China will consider how to engage with US based on its attitude even as it believed “dialogue is better than confrontation and cooperation is better than conflict,” Wang said.

US must also stop blindly smearing China and undermining the country’s sovereignty, security and development interests.

China has held held two rounds of talks with the Taliban recently. Wang, while hosting a Taliban delegation headed by its senior leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar in Beijing, had asked the group to break away from the terrorist groups and not allow the Uygur militants from Xinjiang’s East Turkistan Islamic Movement to operate from Afghanistan.

The Taliban effectively took control of Afghanistan with the capture of Kabul on August 15, two weeks before the US was officially set to wind up the two-decade war with complete withdrawal of its troops from the country.