A group of Russian deputies today submitted a bill to the Duma (the lower house of the Federal Assembly) that paves the way for the recognition of the Taliban movement by the Russian presidency (Kremlin).
The bill includes a new mechanism for lifting the ban on the activities of organizations considered terrorist, such as the Taliban of Afghanistan.
This measure will depend on a court decision based on a recommendation from the Prosecutor General's Office, provided that the organization renounces committing, supporting, promoting or justifying terrorist acts.
The law will only provide for a temporary lifting of the aforementioned ban, since the affected organization may be included in the blacklist again in the event of a repeat offense.
"The law will apply to all terrorist groups, without exception, in relation to which it becomes necessary to cease their recognition as terrorist organizations. If such an issue arises with the Taliban, then it will also include the Taliban," said one of the deputies who authored the text, Ernest Valeev.
Several experts quoted by the local press believe that this law will soon allow the official recognition of the Taliban provisional government in Afghanistan.
In his daily telephone press conference, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov today considered it "very important" to establish contacts with the Kabul authorities.
Moscow's plans to remove the Taliban from the list of terrorist organizations had already been mentioned this week by the Secretary of the Russian Security Council, Sergei Shoigu, when he met with representatives of the Afghan government.
Last October, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also met with the head of diplomacy of the Taliban provisional government, Amir Khan Muttaqi.
At the time, Lavrov and Muttaqi expressed their desire to establish "political relations of trust" between the two countries in order to promote "increased trade cooperation" between the two countries.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has suggested on several occasions in recent years that the Taliban could be removed from the terrorist list, but in the past he has made this conditional on UN approval. Russia banned the Taliban in 2003, although it hosted their representatives on several occasions before they took power in Kabul in August 2021. Since then, the Taliban have traveled to Moscow several times to participate in conferences on reforming Afghanistan, while the Kremlin invited them to participate this year in both the St. Petersburg Economic Forum and the BRICS summit (the world's largest emerging economies).
The Taliban are not recognized as the legitimate government of Afghanistan by most countries in the world, mainly because of their ongoing human rights violations, particularly against Afghan women and girls. The Taliban's deputy spokesman, Hamdullah Fitrat, assures that human rights are protected in Afghanistan and that no one faces discrimination.
"Unfortunately, an attempt is being made to spread propaganda against Afghanistan through the mouths of several (Afghan) women who have fled and to misrepresent the situation," the spokesman said in a message posted this week on the social network X.
"It is absurd to accuse the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan of violating human rights and gender discrimination," added the deputy spokesman for the Taliban, who took power again in August 2021.
No comments:
Post a Comment