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Afghan Embassies Stay Open In Gulf Despite Sanctions
ABU DHABI, Jan 22 (News Agencies) - The Afghan embassies in the Emirates and Saudi Arabia were at work on Monday, but with reduced staff after new U.N. sanctions came into effect last week against the Taliban militia in power in Kabul.
"We have not received any notification from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) authorities to close down the embassy in Abu Dhabi," first secretary Hafiz Azizurahman said.
"But we will implement any decision taken by the Emirati authorities," he said.
The diplomat, who serves as charge d'affaires, said the sanctions that came into effect on January 19th called for the closure of Taliban overseas representative offices, notably in Europe and New York, "but not embassies."
The UAE, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are the only countries that recognize the Taliban administration, which controls most of Afghanistan.
Azizurahman said staff in Abu Dhabi had already been cut back to three diplomats and no replacement named since ambassador Jan Mohammad Madani wound up his mission three months ago.
The embassy, has in effect, been reduced to a consular mission to look after the 100,000 Afghans working in the Emirates, out of around half a million in the Gulf, and to handle deportation cases of illegal immigrants, he said.
The Taliban have another two diplomats in Riyadh and two more at a consulate in the Red Sea city of Jeddah, said the charge d'affaires at the embassy in the Saudi capital, Mulawi Abdulwahab.
"The [U.N.] Security Council sanctions call for only a reduction in the level of representation in our embassies, something which has been the case for our embassy in Riyadh for more than two years already," he said.
Riyadh downgraded diplomatic ties to the level of charge d'affaires in 1998 in protest at the Islamic militia's refusal to extradite the Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden.
Pakistani Foreign Secretary Inamul Haq, meanwhile, said last week that Islamabad has been "reviewing the staff strength of Afghan diplomatic missions" and could ask for a reduction in personnel.
The U.N. Security Council last month gave the Taliban 30 days to hand over bin Laden, who is wanted by Washington for the August 1998 bomb attacks on U.S. embassies in East Africa, and to close training camps in Afghanistan.
Broadening financial and aviation curbs imposed in 1999, the new measures include an arms embargo against the Taliban and an assets freeze on bin Laden and his associates, as well as the closure of the militia's overseas offices.
After the latest sanctions, a UAE-based private airline, which has been operating a weekly service between Dubai and Khandahar in southern Afghanistan, cancelled a flight Sunday and said it would await U.N. clarification before resuming the service.
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