ROME (TASS) An emergency G20 summit on the situation in Afghanistan will take place on 12 October. This was announced on Wednesday at a press conference by Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi.
The initiative for such a summit to discuss the situation in the country after the withdrawal of foreign troops within the framework of the NATO mission belongs to the Italian presidency of the Group of Twenty. Rome insists on involving Russia, China and Turkey in solving the problem. Draghi twice discussed preparations for this summit by telephone with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“I will tell you about the nearest international even-ts. An extraordinary summ-it on Afghanistan will take place on October 12,” the Italian prime minister said.
“We need to look at the commonality of goals of all the G20 countries,” Draghi added. He specified that the country facing a humanitarian catastrophe primarily faces humanitarian goals. “This is a humanitarian catastrophe, the country has no external support. It is necessary that the richest countries do something, “the Italian prime minister said.
The second issue on the agenda of the emergency summit, according to Draghi, will be the discussion of what steps the G20 countries are ready to take so that Afghanistan does not again become a nest of international terrorism.
The Italian prime minister also said that the format of the meeting participants will be expanded at the expense of international financial institutions, as well as a number of countries. Among them, he named Qatar.
As you know, the political committee of the Tali-ban movement, which sei-zed power in Afghanistan in mid-August, is based in its capital, Doha.
Draghi previously said that the G20 Afghanistan summit is planned to be held after a week of high level of the UN General Assembly. Later, the Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation Sergei Vershinin named September 28 as the preliminary date.
The situation in Afghanistan changed dramatically after the US announced in the spring about the beginning of the withdrawal of its armed forces from the country. The Taliban then launched a large-scale military operation and seized control of the country’s territory. On August 15, the radicals entered Kabul without a fight, and President Ashraf Ghani left the country.
Due to a long period of hostilities, the freezing of the country’s assets in US banks and general instability, Afghanistan found itself, as UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres noted earlier, facing the threat of a humanitarian catastrophe.