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UAE Severs Diplomatic Ties with Taliban
ABU DHABI, Sept 22 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The United Arab Emirates has decided to sever diplomatic ties with the ruling Taliban of Afghanistan, the daily
Khaleej Times reported an official source from the UAE's foreign ministry as saying Saturday.
The source said that the UAE had exerted tremendous effort in recent days to try and convince the Taliban government to respond positively to the United State's demand that it surrender Osama Bin Laden to face "international justice" on charges leveled against him regarding the attacks in New York and Washington on September 11th, in which thousands of lives were lost.
"Regrettably the Taliban refused to respond positively to the efforts by the UAE and other countries," the source said.
The source stressed that the UAE cannot, in such a situation, continue to maintain its relations with a government, which refuses to respond positively to the "wishes of the international community".
"As such, the UAE had decided to severe ties with the government of the Taliban from today," the source added.
"The UAE, based on its deep concern for the safety of the Afghan people, hopes that the Afghan officials would review carefully their stand and respond positively to the demand of the international community,"
Khaleej Times quoted the source as saying.
A Taliban official said Saturday there was "so far" no indication that Saudi Arabia would follow UAE's lead and sever ties with them, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
"The office [embassy] is still open and we have not received any instructions [to leave] so far," the Taliban's acting charge d'affaires in Riyadh, Sayyed Mutiullah Khalwati, told AFP.
The UAE, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are the only three countries in the world to have established diplomatic ties with the Taliban, and Islamabad said Saturday it would maintain those links.
Riyadh downgraded ties with Kabul to the charge d'affaires level in 1998 in protest over the Taliban's refusal to hand over bin Laden, the Saudi-born fugitive who was stripped of his Saudi citizenship in 1994.
Since then, the Afghan embassy in Riyadh has confined its activities to administrative and consular matters, such as renewing passports of the approximately 200,000 Afghan residents of the kingdom.
In response to a request by Saudi authorities to keep the number of embassy staffers to a minimum, just two administrative employees work at the mission, in addition to the acting charge d'affaires.
The UAE, which recognized the Taliban in May 1997, as did Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, gave the two diplomats and other Afghan staff at the embassy in Abu Dhabi just 24 hours to close and leave the country, the official WAM news agency said.
In Islamabad, the foreign ministry announced it had no intention of following the UAE's lead.
With several Saudis and one Emirati (UAE national) among the FBI's suspects in the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, in which more than 6,000 people are presumed dead, diplomats say both countries have come under U.S. pressure to sever relations with the Taliban.
Along with other Gulf States, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi quickly announced their readiness to "cooperate fully" with the United States in the "struggle against terrorism".
The six member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council are set to meet in the Saudi capital of Riyadh on Sunday and are expected to present a united front.
The United States claims bin Laden and his associates are the main suspects in the attacks on Washington and New York.
The UAE has complied with U.N. sanctions imposed on the Taliban at the end of 2000 for failing to hand over Bin Laden.
The UAE, where some 110,000 Afghans live, halted an air link between Dubai and the Afghan capital of Kabul last November as the sanctions went into effect.
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