Extended Troika meeting on Afghanistan to convene in Doha today

Moscow, Aug 10 (UNI/SPUTNIK) The meeting of the extended troika (Russia, China, the United States and Pakistan) on Afghan settlement is scheduled to begin on Tuesday, August 10, in Qatar.
The talks will be held behind closed doors, according to the Qatari foreign ministry. This will be the inaugural extended troika meeting for the newly-appointed Chinese envoy for Afghanistan.
The goal of the meeting is to bring Afghan political forces back to the negotiating table in a bid to curb the growing hostilities between Kabul and the Taliban (terrorist group, banned in Russia). The main topic of the agenda will be a review of the current situation in Afghanistan, where the Taliban have ramped up an offensive and began capturing provincial capitals, the Pakistani foreign ministry said earlier.
Russian special presidential representative for Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, told Sputnik that Moscow had “the best expectations” for the upcoming talks, but did not expect any real breakthroughs at least until the fall.
The extended troika consultations come following one-sided meetings with Taliban delegations in Moscow and China’s Tianjin. During their visit to Russia, the Taliban promised not to threaten neighboring Central Asian states and to fight the Islamic State terrorist organization (banned in Russia) on its territory. Following the visit, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov blamed the Afghan government for stalling the Doha peace talks over power struggles, urging both sides to resume negotiations as soon as possible.
The meeting with the Chinese foreign minister also proved positive as Beijing conveyed its hopes that the insurgent group could play an important role in ending the war in Afghanistan and rebuilding the country.
The last-minute UN Security Council briefing on Afghanistan, held on August 3, also underlined the necessity to make urgent progress towards a political settlement and a ceasefire.
However, the consensus before the Tuesday meeting seems to be that it will fail to achieve any meaningful results for now, especially after the Taliban have rejected the US proposal for an interim government.
“I can only speculate about it [the meeting], and my expectations are that it will end up being an introductory meeting where the participants lay out their respective visions, expectations, and red lines for the country following the US withdrawal. I don’t expect actual progress on any issues at all,” Kanishkan Sathasivam, a political science professor at Salem State University, told Sputnik.