MOSCOW, Feb 10: Afghan interim Defence Minister General Mohammad Qasim Fahim flew to Moscow on Sunday seeking pledges from Russia, a long-time sponsor of the victorious anti-Taliban forces, to help beef up the Afghan army.

The Afghan military supremo, formerly defence minister in the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance that routed the hardline Taliban militia last November, is expected to press his Russian counterpart Sergei Ivanov to resume arms supplies to Kabul’s interim regime.

Fahim told journalists on leaving Kabul for the five-day visit that he was “optimistic” about developing relations between Afghanistan and Russia, now that the short-term objectives of the war against the Islamic militia had been met.

The Taliban threat was “completely over and the authorities have stopped searching for their fighters,” Fahim told Russian news agency ITAR-TASS, adding that it was now possible to concentrate on rebuilding Afghanistan’s battered defences.

Fahim was expected to arrive in Moscow late Sunday ahead of talks with Ivanov the following day and with General Anatoly Kvashnin, head of the Russian military, on Tuesday.

“We are extremely interested in a resumption of Russian arms supplies, and intend during the visit to conclude a series of agreements with the Russian defence ministry,” Fahim told the RIA Novosti news agency.

Such cooperation would be beneficial “from an economic point of view” because almost all Afghanistan’s military equipment is of Russian origin and many officers were trained in Soviet schools, Fahim added.

The former Soviet Union equipped and upgraded the Afghan army in the early 1970s, while pro-communist Afghans with the support of the Soviet-trained army staged a military coup in 1978, a year before Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan.

Ahead of his visit, Fahim raised the possibility of Afghan officers being trained in Russian schools, and Russian military advisers being sent to Kabul, but he warned against repeating the mistakes of the past.

“The Afghanistan of today is not the Afghanistan of the Soviet era, and Russia is not the Soviet Union,” he told RIA Novosti, calling for a relationship “of equals” between the two sides.—AFP