Former Soviet States Warn Afghan Militia

Worried by the victory of Afghanistan’s Islamic Taliban militia, Russian and Central Asian leaders said Friday that they will keep that conflict from spreading across their borders.

The leaders of the former Soviet republics--now allied in the Commonwealth of Independent States, or CIS--joined Russia in vowing they would not tolerate “actions that undermine the stability” of their borders with Afghanistan.

“If the conflict in Afghanistan spills across the CIS borders or touches them, adequate steps will be taken,” Kazakh President Nursultan A. Nazarbayev said after the hastily called summit.

Russian security chief Alexander I. Lebed has urged the Kremlin to support factions in Afghanistan opposed to the Taliban, the Islamic fundamentalist militia that controls much of Afghanistan.

But summit leaders said they had no intention of backing Abdul Rashid Dostum, a former Communist general who controls northern Afghanistan. They said they would instead provide humanitarian aid to northern Afghanistan and to refugees.