MOSCOW, October 19. /TASS/. Statements by some officials in Afghanistan that the Soviet Union and NATO bear similar responsibility for the condition of the country’s environment are inaccurate, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement on Wednesday.

"We are surprised by the statements made by some Afghan officials that the environmental damage caused by the activities of the limited contingent of Soviet troops is equivalent to the damage caused during the US-NATO period. That assumption is used as the basis for the inaccurate conclusion that the above-mentioned sides bear the same responsibility for the current deplorable state of affairs in the area of Afghan environment," she said.

According to Zakharova, Russia "is convinced that the main moral and financial responsibility for the current critical state of affairs in Afghanistan, including the environmental component, lies with the countries of the collective West".

"We call on officials in Kabul to make more responsible assessments of Russia's contribution to life in Afghanistan and the comparisons arising from them," the diplomat said.

Zakharova also said that "it was during the US and NATO military campaign in Afghanistan that the deadliest of non-nuclear weapons available to the US armed forces was used, which not only claimed many civilian lives, but provoked a sharp increase in cases of serious diseases among the local population and reduced soil fertility in the region."

"Nothing like that happened in Afghanistan during the Soviet presence, which was accompanied by large-scale gratuitous assistance to the Afghan people and extensive construction of social and economic infrastructure facilities," she said.

Cooperation between the USSR and Afghanistan

Long-term good-neighborly cooperation between the USSR and Afghanistan, Zakharova said, began in the 1920s.

"Since the mid-1950s, assistance was provided to Kabul for the construction of power plants, irrigation systems, grain silos, industrial enterprises, airfields, highways totaling more than 2,000 kilometers in length," she continued. "With the financial and economic assistance from the USSR, more than 140 facilities were built and put into operation in Afghanistan, which actually formed the basis of the country's economy.

Zakharova stressed that the Soviet Union provided free-of-charge assistance to its southern neighbor in the training of civilian personnel: doctors, agronomists and engineers. The USSR helped to build the Kabul Polytechnic Institute and the Mining and Oil College in Mazar-i-Sharif, residential buildings, educational and medical institutions. "Soviet military and economic assistance to Afghanistan is valued at more than $35 billion, of which about $18 billion was provided free of charge," the diplomat said.