Kabul: The Taliban's first official talks with the West on European soil since seizing power in Afghanistan will help "change the atmosphere of war to a peaceful one" after a two-decade insurgency against NATO forces, the group's top spokesman said on Saturday.
Radical Islamists returned to power in August as US and foreign troops began their final withdrawal from the country after a standoff on the battlefield.
No country has yet recognized the Taliban's government - notorious for its human rights abuses for the first time in power between 1996 and 2001, when they were toppled by a US-led invasion.
Zabihullah Mujahid said, "The Islamic Emirate has taken steps to meet the demands of the Western world and we look forward to strengthening our ties through diplomacy with all countries, including European countries and the West in general." Turn the atmosphere of war into a peaceful one."
Talks between the Taliban and Western officials on human rights and humanitarian aid will begin in Oslo on Sunday as the poverty crisis deepens.
The humanitarian situation in Afghanistan has worsened since the Taliban took over. International aid came to an abrupt halt and the United States accumulated $9.5 billion (8.4 billion euros) in assets held abroad by the Afghan central bank.
Hunger now threatens 23 million Afghans, 55 percent of the population, according to the United Nations, which said $5 billion is needed from donor countries this year to address the humanitarian crisis in the country.
Norway's foreign ministry said in a statement that the visit from Sunday to Tuesday will see meetings between hardline Islamists, Norwegian officials and officials from several allied countries, including Britain, the European Union, France, Germany, Italy and the United States. ,
The Taliban delegation is also expected to meet civil society Afghans, including women leaders and journalists, at a time when the freedoms of those living in Afghanistan are being sharply curtailed.
"These meetings do not represent the legitimacy or recognition of the Taliban," Norwegian Foreign Minister Aniken Huitfeld said on Friday. But we should talk to the real authorities in the country. We cannot allow the political situation to lead to an even worse humanitarian disaster. ,
A 15-member all-male Taliban team led by Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaki left Kabul on Saturday in a plane hosted by the Norwegian government, a Taliban spokesman said.
Ali Maisam Nazari, the foreign relations chief of the National Resistance Front (NRF) - an opposition group that bills itself as the last bastion against total Taliban control - denounced Norway over the talks.
"We must all raise our voices and prevent any country from normalizing a terrorist group as representative of Afghanistan," Nazari, who lives in Paris, tweeted on Friday.