Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen leaves after a news conference in Moscow, Russia July 9, 2021. REUTERS/Tatyana Makeyeva

i24 News – The Taliban said it would support a normalization with the United States as well as with regional actors, yet ruled out establishing ties with the Jewish state.

“Of course, we won’t have any relation with Israel,” a spokesperson for the Islamist group told the Russian Sputnik outlet. “We want to have relations with other countries, Israel is not among these countries … We would like to have relations with all the regional countries and neighboring countries as well as Asian countries.”

Yet “if America wants to have a relation with us, which could be in the interest of both countries and both peoples, and if they want to participate in the reconstruction of Afghanistan, they are welcome,” Suhail Shaheen was quoted in the report.

World powers have told the Taliban the key to peace and development is an inclusive government that would back up its pledges of a more conciliatory approach, upholding human rights, after a previous 1996-2001 period in power marked by bloody vendettas and oppression of women.

Meanwhile, Taliban supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzada, in his first public statement since the August 15 seizure of the capital Kabul by the insurgents, said the Taliban were committed to all international laws, treaties and commitments not in conflict with Islamic law.