Russian envoy to India: There should be no double standards in dealing with Islamic State

Russian envoy to India Alexander Kadakin said on Friday evening that there should not be any double standards in dealing with militants of the Islamic State.

Kadakin, who was participating in an interaction between Indian and Russian journalists here, indirectly appeared to be criticizing the United States and accused it of hypocrisy.

"There should not be double standards, but we know that those people behind the oceans, beyond three seas, sometimes they are not just hypocrites and liars, they keep double standards, and sometimes triple standards, but these double and triple standard spread trouble," said Kadakin.

Kadakin further said Russia and India should work together to restore stability in Afghanistan.

"We are in the same boat, and now, our vision is the same, and of course, if we want stability, good stability in Afghanistan which is not stable after the withdrawal, then it will have an effect on both India and Russia in every possible way, in religious extremism, then drug trafficking, murders and all that. Our vision is the same, and we should work jointly," he said.

U.S.-led air strikes have killed several hundred Islamic State fighters around the Syrian town of Kobani, the Pentagon said on Wednesday (October 15), but it cautioned that the town near Turkey's border could still fall to the Sunni militant group.

The U.S.-led coalition has launched about 40 air strikes on the mainly Kurdish town of Kobani, the largest number since the strikes inside Syria began on September 22 and illustrating the difficulty of staunching a nearly month-long Islamic State offensive on the town.

The siege of the mainly Kurdish town on the border with Turkey has become a focus of the U.S.-led effort to halt the militants, who have seized swaths of territory in Syria and Iraq. The United Nations has warned of a massacre if the town falls to the militants, who now control nearly half of it.

U.S President Barack Obama on Tuesday (October 14) told military leaders from more than 20 countries working with Washington to defeat the Islamic State that he was deeply concerned about the extremist group's advances in Kobani and in western Iraq. Still, Obama did not hint at any change in strategy.

Republican Senator John McCain, a frequent Obama critic and his opponent in the 2008 election, said over the weekend that "they're winning and we're not," referring to Islamic State.