KABUL - Hizb-I-Islami Afghanistan (HIA) on Tuesday said it would have a wide presence in future elections and did not worry about the sanctions imposed on the party’s leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar who would soon appear in the capital Kabul.

Mohammad Amin Karim, head of the HIA delegation negotiating with the Afghan government, told the media today that they did not worry about the sanctions imposed on the leadership of the party as it was the responsibility of the government to remove them.

He said the Afghan government and HIA were working on removing the name of Hekmatyar and the party’s other members from the UN black list.

About France’s request from UN not to remove HIA leadership from the blacklist, he said that the French government assured them that there was no problem from their side and differences over the issue was an internal problem of France which has been resolved.

About Russia stance, he said that the Russian government did not take any formal position about the removal of Hekmatyar from UN black list. Amin assured all the sanctions against the HIA would be cleared in the near future.

Arrival of Hekmatyar to Kabul would not be depended to the removal of his from the black list, but only technical and logistic measures were needed to be taken for his welcoming, he added.

HIA during its efforts in the past stressed on election based government systems so it would widely participate and oversee the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections, Amin added.

About the releasing of political prisoners of the party, he said, “About a month back, the HIA shared a list of its 488 prisoners with the government and the government also reviewed the list, we hope the first group of our prisoners would be released in the next few days,” (Pajhwok)