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Reuters
WASHINGTON, October 3 — RIA Novosti. Pentagon chief James Mattis said that the U.S. saw some evidence of support of the Russian movement “the Taliban*”, but can not determine the nature of such support, because they believe that it is not in the national interests of Russia.
Earlier, officials of the former and the current U.S. administration has directly accused Russia of supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan, but did not provide any evidence of such support. Moscow denies such support.
Speaking at hearings in the U.S. house of representatives of the Mattis asked whether he had seen any evidence of Russia’s support of the Taliban*. “We have seen some evidence. I need more certainty that comes from Russia, I can’t understand. It doesn’t make sense. But we are monitoring this closely,” said Mattis.
According to him, support of the Taliban* does not meet the “interests of Russia”. At the same time, he noted that Iran has always had a small financial and military support to the Taliban*.
“I believe that it is very difficult to determine why they are doing something that is not in their interests. I’m not ready to say exactly what it is, I want to see more evidence of how deep the support. Just hard to believe… Iranian diplomats were killed by Taliban, Russia has also apparently had enough problems because of coming from Central and South Asia of terrorism. It just doesn’t make sense,” — said the head of the Pentagon.
Earlier, the Russian foreign Ministry noted that “American generals continues the vicious practice of keeping “afloat” theme of the mythical Russian aid to militants of the Taliban movement*”, while such statements “not supported by any evidence.” In Moscow in this respect I think especially misplaced any hints on the effects of assistance to terrorists.
The representative of Russian defense Ministry major General Igor Konashenkov said earlier that allegations of supply of Russian weapons to the Afghan “Taliban*” are not true, the Agency was not and could not be interactions, and especially the supply of weapons to terrorists.
*Banned in Russia as a terrorist organization