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Taliban Goes Back On Earlier Pronouncements Protecting Bhuddas
KABUL, March 8 (News Agencies) - An international diplomatic campaign will not succeed in saving Afghanistan's ancient Buddhist statues, Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmad Mutawakel said on Thursday, as the Taliban reverse pronouncements made in 1999 protecting the statues.
Wakil's statement came as Japan launched a new bid to save the statues and a day after a UNESCO envoy said the irreplaceable relics had not yet been badly damaged, holding out hope they may yet win a reprieve.
Mutawakel insisted that a decree by the Taliban's supreme leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, ordering the total destruction of all statues in the country was "irreversible."
"We have said that we would not spare pre-Islamic or post-Islamic Buddhist artifacts," the minister said from the militia's southern stronghold of Kandahar.
"The Emirate has been established for realization of Islamic Sharia' [law]. And we will implement the verdict."
The verdict refers to a ruling by a Taliban court following advice from Afghan Ulema, or religious scholars, on the issue.
Mutawakel again brushed aside the idea of building a concrete wall to conceal the Bamiyan Buddhas from view. "The verdict calls for their destruction," he said.
A three-member Japanese delegation arrived in Islamabad Thursday enroute to Afghanistan in the latest bid to persuade the Taliban not to demolish the statues in the central Afghan city of Bamiyan.
UNESCO special envoy Pierre Lafrance said on Wednesday he would return to Afghanistan this week in a second bid to persuade the Taliban to spare the statues.
He was pessimistic about his chances of success but said reliable reports had indicated the statues had not yet been badly damaged.
Militia officials have said the Bamiyan Buddhas are being destroyed with everything from tanks to dynamite. But with the province sealed to outsiders, it is impossible to verify what exactly has happened to them.
Lafrance, the special representative of the U.N.'s culture and education branch, met top officials in Kandahar on Sunday and the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan on Wednesday. His second visit will be to Kabul.
Mullah Omar last week issued an edict ordering his followers to smash statues throughout the country to prevent idolatry. The decree has provoked an international outcry that has included protests from Islamic states such as Pakistan.
The Taliban, who have imposed a unique and strict form of Islamic Sharia' law in the 90% of Afghanistan under their control, have been unmoved by the protests.
Last week's verdict by Mullah Omar on Buddhist statues is in sharp contrast to his decree last year, which had called for the preservation of the historic relics.
The famous Buddhist statues at Bamiyan were made before the advent of Islam in Afghanistan, and are amongst the largest of their kind in Afghanistan and in the world, Omar said in July 1999.
"The government regards the statues with serious respect and considers the position of their protection today to be the same as always," it said.
The government further considers the Bamiyan statues as an example of a potential major source of income for Afghanistan from international visitors, he said.
Omar's previous decree came after international Buddhist communities reportedly warned that in case the Bamiyan statues are damaged, then mosques would be damaged in their regions. "The Muslims of the world are paying attention to this declaration," Omar said.
He added: "The Taliban government states that Bamiyan shall not be destroyed but protected."
The Taliban's National Council approved the previous decree and the ministry of culture had promised to enforce it.
The two colossal Buddhas, including the largest standing Buddha in the world, were carved into sandstone cliffs between the second and fifth centuries AD.
Japan's dispatch of the delegation to Afghanistan was accompanied by an appeal by Foreign Minister Yohei Kono to eight Gulf nations to use their influence in the Islamic world to stop the demolition of the statues.
"The Taliban claim the destruction is based on their Islamic teachings, which ban idolatry," a foreign ministry spokesman said.
"So the minister thought the Gulf countries, sharing the same Islamic roots as the Taliban, may be able to take a different approach than us to help stop the demolition."
The delegation traveling to Kabul carried a letter from Kono to his Taliban counterpart Mutawakel. It was led by New Conservative Party MP Kenshiro Matsunami, who lived in Afghanistan for three years in the 1970s as a wrestling lecturer at Kabul University.
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