MOSCOW, June 27. /TASS/. Russia maintans contact with the Taliban leadership (the movement is outlawed in Russia - TASS), Kremlin Aide Yury Ushakov told reporters at a briefing on Monday.
"We are in contact with the leadership of the Taliban movement. This is the dominating political force in Afghanistan now," Ushakov said. He emphasized that the Kremlin "encourages the new Afghan authorities to form an ethnically and politically balanced government and intensify actions for combating terrorist and drug threat". "Of course, we pay great attention to human rights," he added.
Ahead of Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to Tajikistan, Ushakov stressed that that country's main problem in the foreign policy arena is Afghanistan. "Russia is making energetic efforts to address the issue of combating terrorism and the Afghan drug threat. Of course, we are in favor of the post-conflict reconstruction of the Afghan state, which has suffered severely both politically and socio-economically as a result of the twenty-year presence of foreign forces," he noted. The Kremlin spokesman pointed out that Russia and Tajikistan are working on the Afghan issue both bilaterally and within the framework of multilateral mechanisms, including the expanded Troika: Russia, China, the United States and Pakistan, as well as in the Moscow format of consultations on Afghanistan.