MOSCOW. Oct 27 (Interfax) - Russia will soon provide food, medications and essential items to Afghanistan as humanitarian aid, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.
"In the near future, we plan to send Afghan partners a batch of humanitarian aid, which will consist of food, medications and essential items," Lavrov said on Wednesday at a meeting of Afghanistan's neighbors, which include Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
"The process of forming the system of national education and healthcare and steps to develop Afghanistan's efficient socioeconomic infrastructure in general will require enormous financial resources," he said.
"In this context, I'd like to underscore that those who drove the country to its present state ought to bear the primary responsibility. The time has obviously come to start the work to gather resources for financial, economic and humanitarian aid for the Afghans," Lavrov said.
"Hopefully, Western countries' habitual practice of holding conferences for the sake of conferences is already in the past. We are entering an epoch of concrete efforts in this direction. I am confident that the United Nations should play a coordinating role here," he said.