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Sunday 27 Dec 2015 - 16:02 Makkah mean time-16-3-1437
Taliban members (Image from Internet)
Kabul (IINA) – Afghanistan's Taliban group has officially denied any negotiations or exchange of information with Russia to fight the spread of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group in Afghanistan, Al Jazeera News reported.
The group dismissed the claims on Friday, saying they "don't need anyone's support to fight and eliminate the presence of ISIL".
"We are having talks, but not about fighting ISIL. We want foreign forces out of our country, that is what we are talking about at the moment," a Taliban spokesperson told Al Jazeera.
"They [ISIL fighters] are a small bunch based only in Nangarhar (province) and are not a big or a strong group that we would be threatened with."
The Taliban has a history of denying claims that could harm the perception of their strength or standing.
Zamir Kabulov, an official at the Russian foreign ministry and President Vladimir Putin's special representative for Afghanistan, said earlier this week that "the Taliban interest objectively coincides with ours".
"I have already said earlier that we and the Taliban have channels for exchanging information," he said in remarks carried by Russian media.
"Both the Taliban of Afghanistan and the Taliban of Pakistan have said that they don't recognise (ISIL leader Abu Bakr) Al-Baghdadi as a caliph, that they don't recognise ISIL. Their interests coincide with ours."
Abdul Manan Niazi, spokesperson for Taliban, told Al Jazeera that partnering with Russia is "a fight against all Muslims" in the country.
"They have now turned to infidels to gather support and find a reason to kill their rivals who disagree with them and their strategies," he said.
"This is completely against what our former leader Mullah Omar would have wished for."
Even though Russia claims to have a communication channel with the Taliban, they are banned in the country, along with ISIL. The Taliban for more than a decade has been considered by Moscow as a potential source of terror and instability in the countries of the former Soviet Union.
AB/IINA
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