ISLAMABAD (AP) — The Taliban confirmed Tuesday that their delegation will attend an upcoming U.N.-led meeting in Qatar on Afghanistan, after organizers said last week that women would be excluded from the meeting.
The June 30-July 1 meeting is the third UN-sponsored meeting on the Afghan crisis in Qatar’s capital, Doha.
The Taliban were not invited to the first and second UN Secretary-General António Guterres said they had established unacceptable conditions for participating in the second meeting in February, including demands that members of Afghan civil society be excluded from the talks and be treated as the country’s legitimate rulers.
On Tuesday, the Foreign Ministry in Kabul said the Taliban government’s top spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, will lead the Taliban delegation at the two-day meeting, which begins on Sunday.
The ministry said the strategy for the Doha meeting was discussed at a meeting chaired by Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, which covered various topics, including international restrictions imposed on Afghanistan’s financial and banking system, challenges in growing the sector private and government actions against drugs. traffic.
The Taliban took power in Afghanistan in August 2021, when American and NATO forces were in the final weeks of their withdrawal from the country, after two decades of war.
So far, no country has officially recognized the Taliban as the government of Afghanistan. The United Nations has stated that recognition is almost impossible while bans on female education and employment remain in place.
Last week, the United Nations’ The top official in Afghanistan, Roza Otunbayeva, has defended the failure to include Afghan women at the upcoming meeting in Doha, insisting that demands for women’s rights will certainly be raised.
