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Taliban Representative Meets With U.S. State Department
WASHINGTON, March 21 (IslamOnline) - The Taliban's roving ambassador Sayyid Rehmatullah Hashmi met with U.S. State Department and National Security Council officials Monday,
handing them a letter addressed to U.S. President George W. Bush.
Hashmi, 24, delivered the letter that called for increased dialogue and improved relations between the two governments.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, however, said that the letter did not contain specific details on topics of concern to the international community, such as human rights issues, the drug trade and humanitarian assistance.
Boucher said that they also discussed the possibility of handing over Osama bin Laden.
The U.S. does not recognize the Taliban government.
In an interview with the New York Times, Hashmi said that the main purpose of his visit was to resolve the bin Laden issue, whom he described as a virtual nobody.
Commenting on the destruction of Bamiyan Buddhas, he said that the move was prompted after a visiting delegation of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) tried to offer money to protect the statues which were located in an area where the Taliban was fighting the opposition alliance.
He said that Taliban leaders were shocked when they heard the UNESCO proposal.
"The scholars told them that instead of spending money on statues, why didn't they help our children who are dying of malnutrition? They rejected that, saying, 'This money is only for statues.'"
"The scholars were so angry, they said, 'If you are destroying our future with economic sanctions, you can't care about our heritage.' And so they decided that these statues must be destroyed," Hashmi said.
"If we had wanted to destroy those statues, we could have done it three years ago. So why didn't we? In our religion, if anything is harmless, we just leave it. If money is going to statues while children are dying of malnutrition next door, then that makes it harmful, and we destroy it."
"What do you expect from a country when you just ostracize them and isolate them and send in cruise missiles and their children are dying?" he said.
Outside the Washington office of the Atlantic Council while Hashmi was in Washington, members from the Feminist Majority Foundation took part in a protest with members of the Afghan refugee community protesting the visit by the Taliban militia envoy to the U.S.
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