MOSCOW. Oct 20 (Interfax) - Moscow sees no need and does not intend to participate in the work of the four-party working group on Afghanistan, which includes representatives of Kabul, Beijing, Washington, and Islamabad, the Russian President's Special Representative for Afghanistan and Director of the Foreign Ministry's Second Asia Department, Zamir Kabulov, said.
"We never intended to join its [the four-party group's] work and are not going to do so now. Russia has its own formats aimed at settling the Afghan crisis," Kabulov told the Izvestia newspaper.
The four-sided format involving Afghanistan, China, the United States, and Pakistan is not interesting because of its exceedingly limited efficiency, but Moscow has been keeping a close eye on its work, the newspaper quoted Kabulov as saying.
Oman hosted a meeting of this four-party working group, officially known as the Quadrilateral Coordination Group on Afghanistan, on Thursday, Izvestia said.
Parliamentary and diplomatic sources in Kabul told Izvestia that these talks "failed utterly," and the sides did not manage to agree on the main issue, the launch of negotiations between the Afghan government and the moderate wing of the Taliban movement (banned in Russia).
"Whereas Pakistan continues to support the Taliban one way or another and lobbies for its involvement in the government, Kabul takes an extremely negative view of that. The positions are irreconcilable here. There are also differences between China and the U.S. Beijing supports the Pakistanis, while the U.S. backs the Afghans," one of the newspaper's sources said.