Iran says won’t officially recognise Taliban after Tehran talks

Iran is still a few times away from officially recognizing the Taliban as a neighboring government of Afghanistan, his foreign ministry said, after a meeting with a group in Tehran.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said the high-level talks on Sunday with Taliban representatives were “positive”, but Iran was still “not at the official point of recognizing the Taliban”.

Current conditions Afghanistan is a major concern for the Islamic Republic of Iran and the visit of the Afghan delegation is within this framework of concern, “he added at a press conference on Monday.

The Taliban delegation, led by Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, met with their Iranian colleagues led by Minister of Foreign Affairs Hossein Amirabdollahian.

It was the first visit by the Taliban delegation since the group led to the collapse of the government supported by the West in the midst of the withdrawal of the United States led troops in August.

Since the fall of Kabul, the official position of Iran is that it will only recognize the Taliban if they succeed in forming a “inclusive” government. Iran and the Taliban have made contact since then, with the special Iranian envoy Hassan Kazemi-Qomi made several trips to Afghanistan in recent months.

According to the Iranian foreign ministry statement, Amirabdollahian criticized the “wrong policy” by the United States and its allies in Afghanistan during the meeting, and said the US must lift sanctions based on humanitarian reasons and to help the community and economy.

He also promised that Iran would continue to send humanitarian aid to his neighbors, and said: “The efforts of passionate people in Afghanistan show that there is no foreign power that can occupy Afghanistan and rule the people”.

Amirabdollahian also reminded Muttaqi murder in 1998 from Iranian diplomats at Mazar-I-Sharif during the siege of the consulate in the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and said the Taliban now has the responsibility to protect the diplomatic office.

Iranian and Taliban border forces also had a short clash last month in Hirmand, which was later described as “misunderstanding”.

Muttaqi was quoted when he said during a Sunday meeting the new Afghanistan government emphasized that “it did not oppose one of the neighboring countries”.

Both parties also reported agreed that further meetings would be scheduled between the technical delegation to discuss Iranian water rights from the Helmand River.

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