Premier sees future Taliban government

Later Tokayev said he saw Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban movement dominating a future government there, a Reuters report said. Tokayev made it clear that Kazakhstan, which had long feared the Islamic threat posed by the Taliban, was now softening its stance. “The Taliban is considered by Kazakhstan to be one of the major military and political powers in Afghanistan,” he said. “We hope that in the future there will be a responsible coalition government in Afghanistan with the concrete participation, and probably the dominating participation, of the Taliban,” Reuters reported. Uzbekistan too has softened its stance recently after its ambassador to Pakistan met his Afghan counterpart - a significant change of policy from the Central Asian state which clamped down hardest of all on the rise of Islam in the region.