The US proposes reimposing the journey ban on seven of 13 Taliban members, and protecting the exemption for six others.
A United Nations waiver permitting 13 Afghan Taliban officers to journey overseas expired on Friday, because the Safety Council failed to succeed in an settlement on whether or not to increase the journey exemptions.
China and Russia have known as for an extension, whereas the US and Western nations have sought a decreased checklist of Taliban officers allowed to journey to protest in opposition to the Taliban’s rollback of ladies’s rights and failure to kind an inclusive authorities because it promised.
Underneath a 2011 UN Safety Council decision, 135 Taliban officers are topic to sanctions that embody asset freezes and journey bans. However 13 of them had been granted exemptions from the journey ban to permit them to fulfill officers from different international locations overseas for peace talks.
In June, the 15-member UN Safety Council’s Afghanistan Sanctions Committee eliminated two Taliban schooling ministers from the exemption checklist over the regime’s curtailment of ladies’s rights.
On the similar time, they renewed the exemption for the others till August 19, plus an extra month if no member objected.
If no member of the council objects to the journey ban by Monday afternoon, it would come into pressure for 3 months.
The US on Thursday proposed reimposing the journey ban on seven of the 13 Taliban officers and protecting the exemption for six others, however limiting their journey solely to Qatar, the place US-Taliban talks have taken place, council diplomats mentioned.
A rival proposal
Reporting from the UN headquarters in New York, Al Jazeera’s Kristen Saloomey mentioned that China, backed by Russia, has argued that the journey ban exemptions are “as obligatory as ever”.
Russia and China made a rival proposal that every one 13 Taliban officers be granted journey exemptions for 90 days, however solely to go to Russia, China, Qatar and “regional international locations,” the diplomats mentioned.
Russia and China objected to the US proposal, the diplomats mentioned, and the UK, France and Eire opposed the Russia-China proposal, insisting that the exemption can not proceed for all 13 officers due to the Taliban’s lack of progress on assembly its commitments on girls, forming an inclusive authorities and different points.
A spokesperson for the Chinese language mission on the UN, which at the moment holds the rotating presidency of the Safety Council, this week known as the Western place linking the journey ban to human rights “counterproductive”.
The exemptions are “wanted as a lot as ever,” the spokesperson mentioned, including that if reimposing a journey ban is all different members of the council wish to do, “clearly they've discovered no classes in any respect”.
‘Engagement with Taliban wanted’
Talking from Washington, DC, former Afghan ambassador to France and Canada, Omar Samad, instructed Al Jazeera that engagement with the Taliban is required to assist the Afghan individuals.
“China and Russia are pushing for a continuation of the exemptions and even extending it to others, whereas others need them eliminated as a result of they assume the Taliban has not come via with a few of their commitments,” mentioned Samad.
On Friday afternoon, diplomats mentioned, the US revised its proposal which might ban journey for seven of the Taliban officers and hold the journey waivers for six others for 90 days with no geographic limits.
Russia and China at the moment are contemplating that proposal.
Because the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan on August 15, 2021, as many as 700 individuals have been killed and 1,400 wounded although safety on the entire has improved, in keeping with a report final month by the UN political mission in Afghanistan.
It highlighted how girls have been stripped of a lot of their human rights, barred from secondary schooling and subjected to restrictions on their actions.
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