Russia to supply rifles to Afghanistan next month

Russia will supply Afghan police with Kalashnikov assault rifles in the coming month, a senior Russian diplomat said on Tuesday.

"The issue of delivery of 10,000 AK-47 automatic rifles with ammunition rounds to Kabul via the Russian Interior Ministry has been practically resolved and the shipment is expected to take place in January of 2016," Russian presidential special envoy to Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov said in an interview with the TASS news agency.

Moscow considered its arms supplies as an important factor contributing to normalizing the situation in Afghanistan, and the Russian authorities were considering a series of other requests from Afghanistan, including shipments of helicopters on a commercial basis, he added.

Kabulov also told TASS that the Taliban, an Islamic fundamentalist group, which has been waging an insurgency in Afghanistan since its regime was toppled in late 2001, was seriously preoccupied with the rising influence of Daesh, which, also known as the Islamic State, has indicated a "hostile attitude towards the Taliban leadership."

"We are ready to be flexible to the questions of a possible weakening of the sanctions that the UN Security Council had imposed on the Taliban, if it is not contrary to the national interests of Afghanistan," he said.

Kabulov said earlier this month that Russia has established channels of communication with Taliban militants who were fighting Daesh in Afghanistan, although he declined to say if Moscow had any plans to regard the Taliban as an ally. Endi