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View Full Version : Exclusive: Russia scuttles new U.N. Taliban plan



chloe
01-26-2010, 08:39 AM
A Russian official told Turtle Bay today that his government will not remove Taliban militants from a U.N. list of individuals once suspected of engaging in terrorist activities, thwarting U.S. and U.N. aims to entice so-called moderate Taliban to make peace or switch sides in the Afghan war and support the Western-backed government of Hamid Karzai.

"Our position hasn't changed and we can say we are against the delisting of the Taliban," Ruslan Bakhtin, a spokesman for the Russian mission to the United Nations, said in a interview. "It continues to be a terrorist organization and it continues to carry out terrorist activities on Afghan soil."

Afghanistan and the United Nations have been appealing to the U.N. Security Council in recent weeks to lift sanctions on a handful of Taliban officials who are committed to renouncing violence. The move, which is backed by the United States, is viewed by Kai Eide, the U.N.'s top envoy in Afghanistan, as acritical first step toward opening the door to political talks with the Taliban.

Earlier this month, Afghanistan's U.N. ambassador Zahir Tanin called directly on the 15-nation U.N. Security Council to delist Taliban combatants who are "willing to renounce violence and join the peace process."

For years, Moscow has opposed U.S. and European attempts to reward NATO-friendly former Taliban militants by easing sanctions on them. In 2007, Russian blocked an effort by the United States and the Dutch to delist Karzai's governor of Uruzgan, Abdul Hakim Monib, a former deputy minister of frontier affairs in the prior Taliban government who was said to be a critical asset in the U.S.- led war on terror.

http://turtlebay.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/01/25/exclusive_russia_scuttles_new_un_taliban_plan