Afghanistan may demand war compensation from Russia

    KABUL, Dec. 27 (Xinhuanet) -- The Afghan government said on Tuesday it would examine Russia's demand over loan extended to the country during the ex-Soviet Union's occupation of Afghanistan.

    "The government of Afghanistan is examining the claim," Presidential spokesman Mohammad Karim Rahimi said at a weekly press briefing on the 26th anniversary of the ex-Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan.

    He did not elaborate on the figure that Russia has been demanding, while Moscow says that it extended some 10 billion US dollars as loan to Afghanistan in the last century.

    Over 100,000 troops of the former Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan on December 27, 1979 and occupied the country till February 15, 1989.

    The poor central Asian state plunged into civil war following the withdrawal of the Red Army and experienced brutal factional fighting as well as Taliban's hard-line rule till the regime's collapse by the U.S.-led war in 2001.

    Millions of Afghans had been killed and handicapped during the 10-year Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, Rahimi said.

    "The destruction of Afghanistan began with the invasion of the Soviet Union as the country's all political, economic and social infrastructures had been destroyed," he added. Enditem