"Domestic issues of Afghanistan will not be discussed": Taliban ahead UN-led Doha talks
Jun 29, 2024
Kabul [Afghanistan], June 29 : Ahead of the UN-led meeting in Doha on Afghanistan, Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid has said that domestic issues of Afghanistan will not be discussed, asserting that domestic issues of the nation are not of the United Nations in any way, reported TOLOnews.
According to Mujahid, the Taliban has invited countries at the Doha Summit to interact with Afghanistan.
"Our participation in this meeting is not against any party, but rather engagement with all parties, which should be better understood and utilised," the Taliban representative said, according to TOLOnews.
He added that Afghanistan's domestic concerns would not be handled during the third Doha summit since, in his perspective, they are relevant to the country rather than the United Nations.
Mujahid stated that they are attending this conference under certain conditions, but he did not elaborate on the same.
He also remarked on the Taliban's resistance to women attending the Doha summit, claiming that this opposition was intended to maintain Afghanistan's cohesive stance at the gathering.
"The issue of women's participation in this meeting was that no one other than the Islamic Emirate, which is a system, should represent Afghanistan, because if Afghans appear through several channels in external meetings, it means we are still scattered and our nation is not on one path, and it paves the way for external interventions. Therefore, it is better that whatever we do inside the country is among ourselves, but outside, we should be united as a single Afghan," Mujahid said, according to TOLOnews.
The third Doha meeting is scheduled to be held from June 30-July 1 in Qatar.
The UN held the first Afghanistan Conference (in Doha) in May 2023 without the Taliban to develop a common international approach towards Afghanistan.
The second Afghanistan Conference was called by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in Doha, Qatar, in February this year. Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, Rosemary DiCarlo, visited Afghanistan from May 18 to 21.
In February 2020, the United States and the Taliban signed an agreement on the withdrawal of international forces from Afghanistan by May 2021. In April 2021, NATO Foreign and Defence ministers decided to withdraw all Allied troops from Afghanistan within a few months. With the US and NATO forces announcing withdrawal from the country, the Taliban began an assault on major cities and seized control of several of them. In less than a week, the Taliban had captured seven out of 34 provincial capitals in the country.
Former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country, and the Taliban forces took control of Kabul in August 2021.
