UN cut up over ban on Taliban officers’ journey
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United Nations (United States) (AFP) – Members of the United Nations Safety Council remained divided Monday over whether or not to exempt a few of Afghanistan’s Taliban officers from a journey ban, diplomatic sources stated.
Below a 2011 Safety Council decision, 135 Taliban leaders are topic to a sanctions regime that features asset freezes and journey bans.
13 of them benefited from an exemption from the journey ban, renewed repeatedly, to permit them to fulfill officers from different international locations overseas.
However this exemption ended final Friday, after Eire objected to its automated renewal for an additional month.
In June, the Sanctions Committee in command of Afghanistan, comprised of the Safety Council’s 15 members, had already faraway from the exemptions checklist two Taliban ministers accountable for schooling, in retaliation for the drastic discount within the rights of ladies and women that was imposed by the hardline Islamist regime.
A number of Western international locations wish to additional scale back the checklist, in accordance with diplomatic sources.
They spotlight the failure to respect the commitments to uphold human rights or combat terrorism that had been made by the Taliban after they returned to energy a yr in the past.
Early this month america introduced the killing of Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri in a drone strike on Kabul, calling into query the Taliban’s promise to not harbor militant teams.
China and Russia, nevertheless, supported a daily extension of exemptions checklist.
“These exemptions are nonetheless simply as mandatory,” the Chinese language presidency of the Safety Council stated final week, deeming it “counterproductive” to hyperlink human rights to journey points for Taliban officers.
Since final week, and once more Monday, a number of compromise proposals that will roughly shrink the checklist of officers involved, or the variety of approved locations, have been rejected on each side, in accordance with diplomatic sources.
Discussions are anticipated to proceed.
Pending a attainable resolution, not one of the Taliban officers on the sanctions checklist can journey.
That was of specific concern to the Taliban’s overseas minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, who has visited Qatar a number of occasions in latest months for diplomatic discussions and who was among the many 13 exemptions.
In an announcement posted Saturday on Twitter, a overseas ministry spokesman referred to as on the Safety Council “to not use sanctions as stress instrument” and stated all sanctions towards Taliban officers needs to be lifted.
“If the journey ban is prolonged, it should create distance as an alternative of selling dialogue & engagement, an final result that have to be prevented,” the spokesman stated.
© 2022 AFP
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