The London Conference should not become another forum that legitimizes the new NATO plans on stabilizing the situation in Eurasia, and escalating the situation around Afghanistan. This is stated in an appeal to the London International Conference on Afghanistan adopted by the “Veterans of the Afghanistan War of 1979-1989”. The meeting of the veterans of the Afghanistan War was held in Moscow on the initiative of the National and International Security Foundation on the 22nd of January.        

According to the participants, the London Conference on Afghanistan is held at a time when the situation in the country and around it is destabilizing further. “In virtue of natural, climatic, geographical, geo-historical, geopolitical and other reasons, Afghanistan continues to be a “key state” not only in the Central Asia but Asian as a whole,” says the appeal.

“Attempts by the initiators of the conference to establish the legitimacy of the foreign military interference in Afghanistan’s internal affairs under pretence of antiterrorist operation are a serious cause for worry,” says the text of the appeal received by the editorial board of the Afghanistan-Ru news portal.

The participants of the meeting also expressed concern over the growth in drug production. “Drug sale, which is encouraged by the presence of foreign troops, has turned into the main source of financing terrorism,” says the document distributed on behalf of the former Afghan Defence Minister General Abdul Qadir and the president of the National and International Security Foundation, Major-General Leonid Shershnev.