Russia said on Tuesday it had important matters to discuss with Afghanistan's Taliban leaders and was working to remove the Taliban from its list of banned terrorist organizations. "This is a country that is next to us, and one way or another we communicate with them," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. "We need to resolve pressing issues, this also requires dialog, so in this regard we communicate with them like practically everyone else - they are the de facto authority in Afghanistan."