Day: November 9, 2021

Amir Khan Muttaqi, the interim Afghan foreign minister, will visit Pakistan on Wednesday for the first time since the Taliban retook power in Afghanistan, and will hold talks with his Pakistani counterpart on a wide range of issues, according to officials on both sides.

A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry in Kabul Abdul Qahar Balkhi said in a statement that a senior-level delegation led by Muttaqi will travel to Pakistan on Nov 10.

“(The) delegation will discuss enhancing ties, economy, transit, refugees and expanding facilities for the movement of people, and will include ministers and working groups from Finance and Trade Ministries,” Balkhi tweeted.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman in Pakistan told reporters in the capital Islamabad that Muttaqi will discuss a string of issues with his Pakistani counterpart Shah Mahmood Qureshi, including bilateral relationships, visas to Afghan nationals, and cross-border movement.

Earlier, Pakistan extended a special invitation to Muttaqi to attend the Troika Plus meeting scheduled to be held in Islamabad on Nov. 11, which will include Pakistan’s Special Representative for Afghanistan Ambassador Mohammad Sadiq, US State Department’s Special Representative, and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Afghanistan Thomas West, Russia’s Special Envoy for Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov, and Chinese Special Envoy for Afghanistan Yue Xiaoyong.

The previous meeting took place on Oct. 19 in Moscow, but the US did not participate in the event.

Flanked by then-intelligence chief Gen. Faiz Hameed, Qureshi visited Kabul in October, and it will be Muttaqi’s first visit to neighboring country since the Taliban took control of Kabul in August.

During a visit to Ankara last month, Muttaqi told Anadolu Agency that official recognition of his government and international aid are of critical importance for Afghanistan’s economic recovery.

Although security worries have diminished since the Taliban took power on Aug. 15, two days after, the US government froze about $9.5 billion of Afghanistan’s central bank assets. Many donors and international organizations, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, have stopped making payments to the interim Taliban regime.

“The real question is, why was this money blocked? What did the Afghanistan citizens do?” he asked rhetorically. “On the other hand, the US and other countries say that humanitarian aid should be given to Afghanistan and human rights should be respected. But, they leave 40 million Afghan people without basic necessities.”

Source: Anadolu Agency

The US sharply denounced on Tuesday a visit from the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) top diplomat to Damascus, and issued a veiled warning to regional states to carefully consider any effort to normalize relations with the Syrian regime.

UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed earlier on Tuesday led an Emirati delegation of senior officials to Damascus where they were received by Bashar al-Assad in what marks the first such visit since the Syrian conflict erupted in 2011.

State Department spokesman Ned Price said the Biden administration is “concerned” by the meeting, as well as the “signal it sends.”

“This administration will not express any support for efforts to normalize or to rehabilitate Bashar al-Assad, who is a brutal dictator,” Price told reporters.

“We urge states in the region to carefully consider the atrocities that this regime, that Bashar al-Assad himself, has perpetrated on the Syrian people over the last decade, as well as the regime’s ongoing efforts to deny much of the country access to humanitarian aid and security,” he added.

Price maintained the US would not normalize or upgrade its diplomatic relations with Damascus “nor do we support other countries normalizing or upgrading their relations given the atrocities that this regime has inflicted on its own people.”

Bin Zayed’s visit comes more than three years after the UAE reopened its embassy in Syria.

In June 2020, former US President Donald Trump’s administration warned Abu Dhabi of the repercussions of continued normalization, and the possibility of facing sanctions under the Caesar Act, which authorizes sweeping sanctions on Assad’s regime.

Arab normalization efforts with the Syrian regime have accelerated since July, particularly among Jordan, the UAE and Egypt.

The next Arab League summit in Algeria in March is expected to discuss restoring the Syria’s membership, which has been frozen since 2011 due to the violence of the Assad regime against its people.

Source: Anadolu Agency

The foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Tuesday met with Bashar al-Assad, head of the Syrian regime in the capital Damascus, in the first high-level visit from the Gulf country since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011.

The Syrian regime news agency SANA reported that al-Assad received Abdullah bin Zayed, who was accompanied by Emirati Minister of State Khalifa Shaheen, and head of Federal Authority for Identity, Citizenship, Customs and Ports Security, Ali Al-Shamsi.

The meeting “dealt with bilateral relations between the two brotherly countries and the development of bilateral cooperation in various fields of common interest,” SANA said.

According to SANA, al-Assad spoke of “close brotherly relations” with the UAE and what he called “objective and correct stances adopted by the UAE, stressing that it has always stood by the Syrian people.”

Bin Zayed, for his part, affirmed his country’s support for efforts aimed at achieving stability in Syria.

This is the first official visit by a high-level Emirati official to Syria since the outbreak of the civil war in the country in March 2011.

On Dec. 27, 2018, the Gulf state reopened its embassy in Damascus, after seven years of closure at the level of charge d’affairs.

In June 2020, the administration of then US President Donald Trump warned Abu Dhabi of the repercussions of the continued normalization of its relations with the Syrian regime, and the possibility of facing sanctions under the Caesar Act, which targets everyone who deals with the Assad regime.

Since July, Arab normalization steps with the Syrian regime have accelerated, especially by Jordan, the UAE and Egypt, represented by mutual meetings, agreements and economic understandings.

The next Arab League summit in Algeria in March is expected to discuss restoring the membership of Syria, which has been frozen since 2011 due to the violence of the Assad regime against its people.

In March 2011, popular protests erupted in Syria, calling for the start of a peaceful transfer of power, but the Assad regime chose to suppress it militarily, which pushed the country into a devastating civil war.

Source: Anadolu Agency