A photo posted to the ministry showed Wang Yi posing with senior Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar and his delegation in the city of Tianjin, and then sitting down to talk. a time when the Taliban are thirsting for legitimacy.
Wang said China respects Afghan sovereign independence and territorial integrity and adheres to non-interference in Afghanistan’s internal affairs.
He said the hasty withdrawal of the U. S. and NATO “reveals the failure of U. S. policy and gives other Afghans the opportunity to stabilize and expand their own country. “
Although no timetable for the meeting has been announced, China has an interest in pressuring the Taliban to hold peace talks or at least reduce the point of violence as they envelop the territory of Afghan forces.
China and Afghanistan represent a narrow border in the remote Wakhan Valley, and China has long been concerned about an imaginable spillover of Islamic militancy in its once volatile region of Xinjiang. China has also signed agreements for the extraction of oil, fuel and copper in Afghanistan. , although they have been inactive for a long time.
“The Taliban are an indispensable army and political force in Afghanistan and play a vital role in the peace, reconciliation and reconstruction process,” Wang said.
China, Wang said, expects the Taliban to put the interests of the country and others first and in peace talks, set peace goals, identify a “positive image” and paints for unity among all factions and ethnic groups.
Wang also said China expected the Taliban to “make a decisive deal” with the Islamic Movement of East Turkestan, an organization that China claims to campaign for independence from Xinjiang but that many experts doubt exists even in an operational form.
The heads of the Taliban Religious Council and the Propaganda Committee were on the trip.
The U. S. withdrawal from Afghanistan through Aug. 31 is seen as a blessing for China, Washington’s strategic competitor, which has long resented the presence of U. S. troops in what it sees as its own backyard.
If the Taliban tople the US-backed central government, China may simply win a strategic hall that will allow it and its longtime ally, Pakistan, to exert more pressure on its not-unusual rival, India.
Baradar’s stopover comes shortly after Pakistan’s foreign minister and intelligence leader made a stopover in China.
Pakistan is perceived as the key to peace in Afghanistan. The Taliban leadership is based in Pakistan and Islamabad has used its influence, which it says is now waning, to pressure the Taliban to communicate about peace.
While the Tianjin assembly may be perceived as a slap in the foot for the United States, Washington has met with China and Russia to produce statements calling on the Taliban to reach a peace deal.
Zalmay Khalilzad, Washington’s touch user in talks to end decades of war in Afghanistan, also made a brief report to Pakistan earlier this month when relations between Islamabad and Kabul reached a new low.
This has fueled the belief that the U. S. is making greater efforts to reach a peace deal before the Aug. 31 deadline that also includes China.
After U. S. Assistant Secretary of State Wendy Sherman met with Wang in Tianjin on Monday, she and the State Department included Afghanistan on the list of “areas of global interest” in which the U. S. and China could simply cooperate.
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