Foreign Minister of Uzbekistan Abdulaziz Kamilov spoke about the agreements with the Taliban.
“After the August events, we welcomed the creation of an interim government, which has not yet been recognized. Here, I think, we will act together. We proceeded from the fact that this is reality, there is no other alternative. And we have a lot of issues on our agenda that need to be addressed today. For example, the security of border areas - with whom to decide? Ashraf Ghani left the territory of Afghanistan. And the Taliban are a real force that has begun to control the situation throughout the country. We came to an agreement with them, they promised and so far fully ensure the security of the border areas in the Balkh province, in Mazar-i-Sharif, on the border. You can go to the “Friendship” bridge, going from Termez to Afghanistan, if even a sparrow flies there, not just a refugee, it will be seen,” he said during a press conference.
The Foreign Minister also spoke about the refugees.
“When a large mass of people poured out from Afghanistan, among whom, perhaps, some were really refugees, others just wanted to take advantage of the situation and in search of a better life to leave Afghanistan, hoping that they would be taken from Uzbekistan to Western countries, Europe, we calmly agreed with the Taliban movement on preventing an influx of uncontrolled refugees. They helped us, calmed people down, told them: come back home and live in peace,” he said.
In addition, it became known that the agreement was mainly reached during the recent meeting in Termez.
“Two delegations, headed from the Afghan side by the acting Deputy Prime Minister Mr. Hanafi and from our side by the Deputy Prime Minister Sardor Umurzakov, have reached an agreement that in the future we will create something like an intergovernmental commission. Secondly, mobile groups will also be created by industry: trade, transport, railways, social issues, border security and much more that is of interest to us. It should be noted that these meetings at the working level are already being held and it is possible to resolve the accumulated problems,” the minister said.
Kamilov stressed that today the main limiting problem for the development of cooperation is the absolute absence of any financial potential from the interim government.
“Bank accounts are frozen, they cannot carry out transactions, there is no money. Various figures are cited, about $7 billion, which are very large financial resources for Afghanistan and could, in our opinion, help to overcome the crisis period. At the same time, it is impossible to raise the entire economy solely on humanitarian aid. It is necessary to re-create the economic basis of the state. This is the main difficulty in the current situation in Afghanistan,” the Foreign Minister concluded.
