LONDON – US special envoy Richard Holbrooke welcomed a UN committee’s removal of five former senior Taliban officials from a sanctions list yesterday and called for the list to be overhauled.
The decision by a UN Security Council committee, the first time former Taliban officials have been removed from the list, came before a 70-nation conference in London today to establish a framework for handing security over to Afghan forces.
Nato powers are expected to back President Hamid Karzai’s plan to reach out to Taliban insurgents. Removal from the UN sanctions list is among the incentives under discussion.
Mr Holbrooke called the UN committee’s decision, which means the five will no longer be subject to international travel bans and asset freezes, a “long-overdue step”.
“That list . . . should be re-examined and scrubbed down. There are people on it who are dead; there are people on it who shouldn’t be on it,” Mr Holbrooke, US president Barack Obama’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, told a news briefing.
“We welcome the forward progress of the UN yesterday . . . I hope that that process of refining the list and improving it will continue,” he said.
The decision leaves 137 Taliban on the sanctions list.
The committee will continue a thorough review of the register as demanded by recent resolutions of the security council, western security council diplomats said.
Mr Obama is sending an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan to try to break a military stalemate which has developed during an eight-year conflict with the hardline Islamists who ruled from Kabul from 1996 until US-led forces toppled them after the September 11th, 2001, attacks.
In recent days, three generals, US and British, have held out the possibility of an eventual peace deal with the Taliban.
Meanwhile, UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon said he would appoint Staffan de Mistura of Sweden as his next special envoy in Afghanistan to help oversee a beefed-up civilian drive to bring about peace in the troubled state.
Mr de Mistura, a senior official at the UN World Food Programme in Rome and former UN special envoy to Iraq, will succeed Kai Eide of Norway and take up his appointment on March 1st, Mr Ban said.
Mr Ban’s announcement came one day before a conference he will attend in London, which will seek to set a framework for eventually handing security over to Afghan forces. Nato powers are likely to support plans by Mr Karzai to deal with Taliban insurgents.
Mr de Mistura is expected to play an important role supporting Mr Obama’s new policy in Afghanistan, which includes more US and Nato troops to defeat the Taliban insurgency and a “civilian surge”.
On Tuesday, Nato named a senior British diplomat, Mark Sedwill, to be its civilian representative in Afghanistan.
The European Union is also expected to appoint a new envoy.
Mr de Mistura had been tipped for weeks to be the new UN envoy, but briefly withdrew from the race last week, citing family reasons. – (Reuters)