World leaders react as Taliban set to form interim govt

In a stunning rout, the Taliban seized nearly all of Afghanistan in just over a week, despite the hundreds of billions of dollars spent by the U.S. and NATO over nearly two decades to build up Afghan security forces. Just days earlier, an American military assessment estimated it would be a month before the capital would come under insurgent pressure.

Hyderabad: As the Taliban gears up to seize complete control of Afghanistan, world leaders have expressed disappointment and shock at how the events unfolded in the last few days and the security situation in the war-torn country.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson traded barbs at the US and its President Joe Biden. Johnson said it was "fair to say the US decision to pull out has accelerated things, but this has in many ways been a chronicle of an event foretold."

He, however, urged western leaders to work together to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a "breeding ground for terror". "I think it is very important that the West should work collectively to get over to that new government - be it by the Taliban or anybody else - that nobody wants Afghanistan once again to be a breeding ground for terror and we don't think it is in the interests of the people of Afghanistan that it should lapse back into that pre-2001 status," Johnson told Sky News.

"I think we've known for some time this is the way things were going and as I said before, this is a mission whose military component really ended for the UK in 2014, what we're dealing with now is the very likely advent of a new regime in Kabul, we don't know exactly what kind of a regime that will be," Johnson said.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he is "heartbroken" by the crisis on the ground. "We've been constantly monitoring the rapidly evolving situation," Trudeau said. "We are heartbroken at the situation the Afghan people find themselves in today."

Leonid Slutsky, foreign affairs chief in the lower house of the Russian parliament, said the situation in Afghanistan required the "immediate intervention" of the UN Security Council. "It is important to prevent a new humanitarian catastrophe," he said, according to the RIA Novosti news agency.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said his government will "redouble" efforts to evacuate people in Afghanistan that have aided the Australian effort in the country.

"Our focus now is to ensure that we continue to support those who have aided us and ensuring that 400 people have already been brought to Australia as we have been working on this quite rapidly in recent months as the situation continues to deteriorate," Morrison said. "We will continue to redouble our effort in that regard with our partners."

Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden justified his country's decision to withdraw the army from Afghanistan, a process that witnessed a carnage by the Taliban which was dormant for 20 years. “One more year, or five more years, of US military presence would not have made a difference if the Afghan military cannot or will not hold its own country," Biden said. “And an endless American presence in the middle of another country’s civil conflict was not acceptable to me,” he pointed out.