UN chief, envoys in key talks on Afghanistan crisis

DOHA — UN chief Antonio Guterres will collect worldwide envoys at a secret location in Doha on Monday in an more and more determined bid to search out methods to affect Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers.

Considered the world’s greatest humanitarian disaster by the United Nations, Guterres’s quandary has been deepened by the Taliban administration’s transfer to cease ladies going to highschool and most ladies from working, even for UN businesses.

The Taliban authorities, which took again energy in August 2021, might be absent from the talks with representatives from about 25 nations and worldwide organizations, in accordance with diplomats.

Ahead of the talks, a small group of ladies staged a protest in Kabul on Saturday to oppose any worldwide recognition of the Taliban authorities. But the UN and Western powers are adamant this won’t be mentioned.

“Any kind of recognition of the Taliban is completely off the table,” mentioned US State Department spokesman Vedant Patel.

Apart from confirming that the Taliban management shouldn’t be on the record of contributors, the UN has refused to supply any specifics together with the placement in Qatar’s capital or who will be a part of Guterres.

The Taliban’s deputy minister for refugees Mohammad Arsala Kharoti mentioned on Sunday that “such meetings will not have any results.”

“As long as they don’t establish proper relations with the Emirate (Taliban-ruled Afghanistan) and no representation of the Emirate is present, these meetings won’t be successful to a great extent,” he informed AFP at Kabul airport.

In Doha, the UN secretary-general can be to offer an replace on a assessment of the world physique’s essential aid operation in Afghanistan, ordered in April after authorities had stopped Afghan girls from working with UN businesses, diplomats mentioned.

The UN has mentioned it faces an “appalling choice” over whether or not to take care of its big operation within the nation of 38 million.

Torn aside over the Ukraine battle and different international tensions, the UN Security Council powers united on Thursday to sentence the curbs on Afghan girls and ladies and urge all nations to hunt “an urgent reversal” of the insurance policies.

The Afghan overseas ministry rejected the decision and mentioned the ban “is an internal social matter of Afghanistan.”

UN ‘in a lure’

Richard Gowan, UN knowledgeable for the International Crisis Group, an unbiased NGO, mentioned the UN is “in a trap over Afghanistan.”

“Guterres has to untangle a very complicated knot. He needs to find a way to keep aid flowing into Afghanistan, but the Taliban ban on women is a huge blow to the UN’s ability to operate in the country.”

Gowan mentioned the worldwide neighborhood desires the UN to take care of its essential presence.

“There are lots of differences among Security Council members over Afghanistan. But everyone, including Russia and China, agrees it is better to have the UN in Kabul than not.”

The United Nations has given few indications of what proposals may very well be made on the assembly.

UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric mentioned on Friday the goal “is to reinvigorate international engagement around common objectives for a durable way forward on Afghanistan.”

The international physique additionally desires “unity or commonality of message” on girls’s and human rights, countering terrorism and drug trafficking.

“Recognition is not an issue,” Dujarric insisted. Whether the Taliban authorities takes up Afghanistan’s UN seat is for the UN General Assembly to resolve.

But the UN and different teams have been holding more and more intense discussions on methods to have interaction with the Taliban authorities and presumably supply incentives for change.

US Afghanistan envoy Thomas West has been touring throughout West Asia in current weeks assembly completely different governments and teams.

Last 12 months the United States moved $3.5 billion of seized Afghan belongings right into a Swiss-based fund to pay for aid and imports that aren’t managed by the Taliban authorities.

Suggestions have been made that the US administration ought to take into account easing sanctions.

“Much as we might prefer to see regime change in Afghanistan, for the foreseeable future a reasonably stable and sufficiently capable Taliban government is needed to help facilitate humanitarian programs, neutralize ISKP (Islamic State), and avert state collapse and civil war,” Washington assume tank the Middle East Institute mentioned in a report final week. — Agence France-Presse

Source: www.gmanetwork.com