The Taliban administration wants to formally join Chinese President Xi Jinping’s huge ‘Belt and Road’ infrastructure initiative and will send a technical team to China for talks, Afghanistan’s acting commerce minister said on Thursday.
Last month, China became the first country to appoint an ambassador to Kabul, with other nations retaining previous ambassadors or appointed heads of mission in a charge d’affaires capacity that does not involve formally presenting credentials to the government.
“We requested China to allow us to be a part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and Belt and Road Initiative… (and) are discussing technical issues today,” acting Commerce Minister Haji Nooruddin Azizi told Reuters in an interview a day after the Belt and Road Forum ended in Beijing.
The Pakistan “economic corridor” refers to the huge flagship section of the Belt and Road Initiative in Afghanistan’s neighbour. Azizi said the administration would also send a technical team to China to enable it to “better understand” the issues standing in the way of it joining the initiative, but did not elaborate on what was holding Afghanistan back.— Reuters
