Taliban at odds with the world community - Vendrell

UN special envoy to Afghanistan, Francesc Vendrell, told IRIN on Monday that the Taliban’s destruction of Buddhist statues would not put donor governments in the best mind to provide funding for the war-torn country. Vendrell, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s Personal Representative to Afghanistan, said that the Taliban’s latest actions, which intensified the country’s isolation at a time when its humanitarian crisis was worsening, had only served to further aggravate tensions. “I am sure a lot of countries who were not sympathetic to the Taliban before [the destruction of the statues] will be even less sympathetic now,” he said. While the Taliban cited religious reasons for their campaign to destroy the non-Islamic religious heritage of the country, Islamic leaders around the world have stressed that the Taliban’s fatwa (or religious edict) has no justification in the Muslim faith. Vendrell said that the sheer act of destruction of such cultural heritage showed that the Taliban lived in a different world from the rest of international society. “It is extraordinary these days, for a movement that claims to be a government, to decree the destruction of cultural heritage dating back approximately 1,500 years. One would have to go back to the 15th century to find examples of this [type of destruction] happening. It shows a certain sense of mind,” he said. Taliban officials have hinted to the media that the UN Security Council’s imposition of stricter sanctions on the movement in December may be behind the destruction of the Buddhas. The UN Security Council, on 19 December last, tightened pre-existing sanctions against the Taliban in an attempt to persuade it to hand over alleged terrorist Usama bin Laden and to curb the activities of terrorist camps in Afghanistan. [see SC 1333 at: http://www.un.org/Docs/scres/2000/sc2000.htm] “What it clearly shows is that there are those in the Taliban who believe they have very little to gain by taking into account the views of the international community,” Vendrell told IRIN. He said the international community must focus on the need to find a comprehensive political settlement. “Otherwise there will continue to be displaced persons, there will continue to be conflict and misery, there will continue to be drugs and terrorism. The international community needs to address the Afghanistan issue comprehensively, to renew their efforts to finding a solution,” Vendrell added. Renewed hopes that a solution might be found in UN-brokered peace talks between the warring parties - the Taliban and the opposition Northern Alliance - are fading. Vendrell has been trying to start a dialogue process, agreed to by the two parties last November, but with little evident success. He said on Monday that attempts to renew the peace negotiations were “proving difficult”. The Taliban, ostensibly willing to enter talks with its opposition, refuses to do so under the auspices of the UN. The Northern Alliance will only negotiate using the good offices of the UN. Vendrell was hopeful however of an “evolution in Taliban thinking” in the coming weeks, and said that Kofi Annan’s meeting with the Taliban’s foreign minister, Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil, in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, last Sunday could help to persuade the Taliban to accept UN-brokered negotiations. “However, I fear that the spring and summer will be quite hot in terms of fighting. This means that the mental attitude of both parties in terms of peace talks will not be a positive one,” Vendrell added.