MILAN   -  Afghanistan believes that the road map announced by President Ashraf Ghani at the November conference on Afghan settlement in Geneva will lead to the Taliban movement ending its violence and help lead to a resolution to the long-standing crisis in the country, Afghan Deputy Foreign Minister Idrees Zaman said on Friday.

The Geneva Conference on Afghanistan took place on November 27-28. During it, Ghani said that the Afghan authorities had prepared a road map for peace talks to settle the internal conflicts in the country, having formed the required bodies and mechanisms to pursue a peace agreement. “We further completed the road map by forming the required bodies and mechanism for formal negotiations, which we believe will result in.

Taliban stopping violence, severing their ties with terrorist group and joining their people in the democratic and inclusive society,” Zaman said at the 25th OSCE Ministerial Council in Milan.

The deputy foreign minister recalled that in February Ghani proposed holding talks with the Taliban “without preconditions” as part of the efforts to end the conflict.

Afghanistan has long been suffering from political, social and security-related instability due to simmering insurgency, including that of the Taliban and the Islamic State terrorist group (outlawed in Russia).