CIS Leaders Calls for Political Settlement of Afghan Issue

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Saturday, December 01, 2001

CIS Leaders Calls for Political Settlement of Afghan Issue

Presidents from the 12-member Commonwealth Independent State (CIS) voiced here Friday their collective support for a political settlement in Afghanistan, while stressing the Taliban should be excluded from the country's future government.

The CIS leaders, who gathered here for the organization's 10th anniversary celebration, called in a joint statement to establish a broad-based multiethnic government in Afghanistan, insisting that the Taliban had lost the right to join the power structure.

Afghanistan's future should be exclusively decided by the Afghan people themselves, they noted, hoping to see a new Afghanistan that lives in peace and harmony with its neighbors and the whole international community.

Those leaders also pledged to step up humanitarian aid to Afghanistan and to work out an international program of postwar restoration of the country.

They reiterated the intention to ensure security of the territories of the CIS countries and to promote the creation of a global anti-terrorism system under the U.N. auspices.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a subsequent press conference that the anti-terrorism issue would remain as focus of the attention of the CIS members until it was fully solved.

Noting that the CIS countries had encountered the terrorism problem earlier than Western nations, Putin appreciated the ideas of creating the CIS anti-terrorist center and the rapid reaction force.

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