“This is a very dangerous area for us all. We already know examples, tragic examples, when militants crossed the border from Afghanistan. I am not talking here about drug trafficking and criminals infiltrating our countries,” Putin told the Mir broadcaster in an interview published Wednesday.
Deputy foreign ministers of 12 countries were meeting in Moscow on Friday in an effort to build up genuine regional cooperation on facilitating the peace process in Afghanistan.
“In February, Moscow organized six-party consultations by representatives of Afghanistan, India, Iran, China, Pakistan and Russia, and now we added to this a quintet of Central Asian countries, plus the United States,” Goncharov added.
Taliban representatives were not invited and were represented at the Moscow meeting by Pakistan, which had reportedly been authorized to outline the terms of the Islamists’ participation in the peaceful resolution of the Afghan crisis.
“As for the United States, it continues to play a central role in the ongoing peace process in Afghanistan, even though it doesn’t look like the Americans are too eager to resolve the Afghan problem,” Pyotr Goncharov noted.
Ahead of US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s visit to Moscow, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that “what the US is going to do with Afghanistan remains anyone’s guess.”
The nine-ton GBU-43 bomb, dubbed "the Mother of All Bombs," was dropped from a MC-130 plane in Nangarhar province, targeting underground facilities and a system of tunnels used by terrorists.
The GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) is a large-yield conventional non-nuclear bomb which was considered to be the most powerful non-nuclear weapon ever developed at the time of its creation. The cost of a single MOAB is $16 million.
This was the first time the bomb, in service since 2003, was dropped in a combat action.
At least 82 militants were killed as a result of the bomb strike, The New York Times reported on Friday, citing Attaullah Khogyani, a spokesman for the Nangarhar provincial governor’s office.
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