Month: September 2022

KABUL: The Taliban have signed a provisional deal with Russia to supply gasoline, diesel, gas and wheat to Afghanistan, Acting Afghan Commerce and Industry Minister Haji Nooruddin Azizi told Reuters.

Azizi said his ministry was working to diversify its trading partners and that Russia had offered the Taliban administration a discount to average global commodity prices.

The move, the first known major international economic deal struck by the Taliban since they returned to power more than a year ago, could help to ease their isolation that has effectively cut it off from the global banking system.

No country formally recognises the group, which fought a 20-year insurgency against Western forces and their local Afghan allies before sweeping into Kabul as U.S. troops withdrew.

Western diplomats have said the group needs to change its course on human rights, particularly those of women, and prove it has cut ties with international militant groups in order to gain formal recognition.

Russia does not officially recognise the Taliban’s government, but Moscow hosted leaders of the movement in the run-up to the fall of Kabul and its embassy is one of only a handful to remain open in the Afghan capital.

Azizi said the deal would involve Russia supplying around one million tonnes of gasoline, one million tonnes of diesel, 500,000 tonnes of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and two million tonnes of wheat annually.

Russia’s energy and agriculture ministries did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the agreement. The office of Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, who is in charge of oil and gas, also did not immediately respond.

Azizi said the agreement would run for an unspecified trial period, after which both sides were expected to sign a longer term deal if they were content with the arrangement.

He declined to give details on pricing or payment methods, but said Russia had agreed to a discount to global markets on goods that would be delivered to Afghanistan by road and rail.

The deal was finalised after an Afghan technical team spent several weeks in discussions in Moscow, having stayed on after Azizi visited there last month.

Economy in Crisis

Since the Taliban regained power, Afghanistan has been plunged into economic crisis after development aid upon which the country relied was cut and amid sanctions that have largely frozen the banking sector.

The trade deal is likely to be watched closely in the United States, whose officials have held regular talks with the Taliban on plans for the country’s banking system.

Washington has announced the creation of a Swiss trust fund for some of the Afghan central bank reserves held in the United States. The Taliban have demanded the release of the entire amount of around $7 billion and said the funds should be used for central bank operations.

Azizi said international data showed most Afghans were living below the poverty line, and his office was working to support trade and the economy through international outreach.

“Afghans are in great need,” he said. “Whatever we do, we do it based on national interest and the people’s benefit.”

He said Afghanistan also received some gas and oil from Iran and Turkmenistan and had strong trade ties with Pakistan, but also wanted to diversify.

“A country … shouldn’t be dependent on just one country, we should have alternative ways,” he said.

The Group of Seven (G7) nations are trying to find ways to limit Russia’s oil export earnings in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine in February.

Moscow has managed to maintain revenues through increased crude sales to Asia, particularly China and India. The European Union will ban Russian crude imports by Dec. 5 and Russian oil products by Feb. 5.

Markus Potzel, the United Nations deputy representative in Afghanistan, told the council that while there have been some positive developments since the Taliban took power last year, “they have been too few and too slow and are outweighed by the negatives.”

“I am afraid that patience is running out by many in the international community regarding a strategy of engagement with Afghanistan’s Taliban,” he said.

Potzel spoke as UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres noted that the Taliban have been “ambiguous as to the extent to which they would wish to engage externally, absent formal recognition and predicated on being in accordance with their interpretation of the sharia.”

In his quarterly report released on Tuesday, Guterres also said he believes this year’s US killing of Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri by drone strike in Kabul “brought to the fore the continuing ties between the terrorist group and the Taliban, which would be contrary to the latter’s counter-terrorism commitments.”

Editorial: Deprived of education

The report also denounced the “severe restrictions” still imposed on the rights of women and girls, including the ban on secondary education.

In a joint statement focusing on girls’ education, the 10 non-permanent members of the Security Council and the five countries that will take seats on the council next year called on the Taliban to “immediately reverse this decision.” “The international community has not and will not forget Afghan women and girls,” they said.

One envoy however suggested there was opposition from at least one of the permanent Security Council members, who wield veto power.

“We have worked hard in order to get a statement from the entire council, but we were not able to,” Norwegian Ambassador Mona Juul told reporters.

According to a diplomatic source, China and Russia opposed a joint statement that did not also include a request for the release of Afghan assets frozen since the Taliban’s return to power.

During the meeting, Chinese Ambassador Geng Shuang, stressing the need to ensure the right of girls, said that the assets frozen abroad “should be used expeditiously for the improvement of Afghan lives and economic reconstruction.”

RIYADH: Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Tuesday has been appointed as Saudi Arabia’s prime minister.

Saudi Arabia’s King and Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud issued a royal decree to name the new prime minister of the Kingdom.

The crown prince was earlier the deputy premier and minister of defence of the kingdom.

According to another royal decree, the king has also restructured the Council of Ministers, which is headed by the crown prince.

The Saudi king also issued a decree appointing the Deputy Minister of Defence Prince Khalid bin Salman as the defence minister of the Kingdom.

In a joint media briefing with his Pakistani counterpart a day earlier, Secretary Blinken said: “We talked about the importance of managing a responsible relationship with India, and I also urged our colleagues [Pakistan] to engage China on some of the important issues of debt relief and restructure so that Pakistan can more quickly recover from the floods.”

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin on Tuesday addressed this issue, saying that Beijing was already providing assistance for the flood victims and would also help rebuild thousands of homes in the affected areas.

He urged other nations to also do “something real and beneficial, instead of passing unwarranted criticism against China-Pakistan cooperation.” The Chinese government provided RMB 400 million worth of humanitarian assistance to Pakistan while China’s civil society is also “lending a hand,” he said.

Blinken asks Pakistan to engage with Beijing for debt restructuring; Wang Wenbin hits back over ‘unwarranted criticism’

Pakistan has discussed the possibility of restructuring its debt with creditors after the recent appeal by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres for “an effective mechanism of debt relief” and is believed to have brought it up during the first bilateral meeting between FM Bhutto-Zardari and Secretary Blinken.

The United States is so far the largest donor to the flood relief and rehabilitation funds, providing about $56 million since July. Washing­ton announced an additional $10 million for food security after the bilateral meeting.

The Pakistani foreign minister, however, urged the two world powers to cooperate, not fight, with each other over this issue. “Let me be absolutely clear. We will not overcome climate change. We will not save our planet. If China and the US do not work together on climate,” said Mr Bhutto-Zardari in his address at a Washington think-tank, Woodrow Wilson Centre. “Everything else can wait. Every other conflict. Every other dispute. We will all fight among ourselves if there’s a planet left to fight over,” he said.

The foreign minister recalled a recent statement by the UN chief, adding that helping the countries that were facing the consequences of the global warming “is about climate justice.” He earlier highlighted the fact that Pakistan contributes only 0.8 per cent to climate change but faced 24pc of its consequences. He urged the “great polluters to pause until we can survive” and “help the victims of their industrialisation get over this catastrophe”.

Commenting on his conversation with Mr Blinken, Mr Bhutto-Zardari said the two countries were already “broadening” their conversation. “We just don’t talk about Afghanistan, and we just don’t think about Afghanistan. We are talking about enhancing trade and economic cooperation, energy and agriculture, and education,” he said.

About efforts to improve relations with India, the minister said: “This is a very different India, Mr Modi is not Manmohan Singh, or even Mr Vajpayee,” reminding his American audience that Mr Modi was refused a US visa until he became the prime minister. “We want a manageable and responsible relationship with India,” he said, adding that he was not surprised by India’s reaction to the US decision to give $450 million to upgrade Pakistan’s fleet of F-16 aircraft. “Obviously, Indians are going to be upset, let them be, Kiya karein (what do we do),” he said.

The India-Pakistan conflict also echoed in the UN this week when Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif urged India to undo the illegal annexation of the occupied Kashmir and also to grant the right of self-determination to the people of the disputed valley.

In Washington, the foreign minister also underlined the change he saw in the US attitude towards Pakistan, adding that he was “not just surprised but absolutely impressed with the approach US has towards Pakistan now.”

The “good thing is we have been de-hyphenated by the US, previously it was Af-Pak or India-Pak but now it’s not”, he added.

Secretary Blinken in his meeting with Mr Bhutto-Zardari said, “We spoke, too, about the importance of meeting our commitments as democracies, upholding core values like respect for freedom of religion, belief, freedom of expression.”

WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday defended military sales to Pakistan after withering criticism from growing US partner India, which considers itself the target of Islamabad´s F-16 planes.

Blinken met in Washington with India’s foreign minister a day after separate talks with his counterpart from Pakistan, whose Cold War alliance with Washington has frayed over Islamabad’s relationship with Afghanistan’s Taliban.

The top US diplomat defended a $450 million F-16 deal for Pakistan approved earlier in September, saying the package was for the maintenance of Pakistan’s existing fleet.

“These are not new planes, new systems, new weapons. It’s sustaining what they have,” Blinken told a news conference with his Indian counterpart, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar.

“Pakistan’s programme bolsters its capability to deal with terrorist threats emanating from Pakistan or from the region. It’s in no one’s interests that those threats be able to go forward with impunity,” Blinken said.

Jaishankar did not criticise Blinken in public. But on Sunday, speaking at a reception for the Indian community in the United States, Jaishankar said of the US position, “You’re not fooling anybody.”

“For someone to say, I’m doing this because it’s for counter-terrorism when you’re talking of an aircraft like the capability of the F-16, everybody knows where they are deployed,” he said, referring to the fleet’s positioning against India.

“Very honestly, it’s a relationship that has neither ended up serving Pakistan well nor serving American interests well,” he said.

India historically has bought military equipment from Moscow and has pressed the United States to waive sanctions required under a 2017 law for any nation that buys “significant” military hardware from Russia.

Speaking next to Blinken, Jaishankar noted that India has in recent years also made major purchases from the United States, France and Israel.

India assesses the quality and purchase terms and “we exercise a choice which we believe is in our national interest,” he said, rejecting any change due to “geopolitical tensions.”

DHAKA: Rescue workers recovered 26 more bodies on Monday after a boat carrying religious pilgrims capsized in Bangladesh, taking the death toll to 51 with at least a dozen people still missing, police said.

The small boat packed mostly with women and children on their way to a popular temple flipped over on Sunday in a river as onlookers screamed from the shore.

The incident near the remote northern town of Boda was the latest in a string of similar tragedies blamed on poor maintenance and overcrowding in the low-lying delta country.

Regional police chief Sirajul Huda said fire service and navy divers recovered 26 bodies in the Karotoa River downstream from where the boat tipped over.

It was carrying around 90 people, of whom around 50 were pilgrims on their way to the centuries-old Hindu temple for a major festival, according to police.

Huda said up to 15 people were still missing.

“We called off the search in the night. We will resume our search operation tomorrow morning,” he told AFP.

Police said they have lowered the number of missing people as some have reported that they have found relatives who had swum to safety.

Huda said the boat was carrying three times its capacity.

“There were heavy rains in the morning and that is why when the ferrying began, pilgrims packed the boat to make it quickly to the temple,” he told AFP.

“The boatman asked some people to disembark in an effort to ease the weight-load. But no one listened,” he said.

Local media said at least 10 people had been rescued and sent to hospital.

Mobile phone footage aired by TV station Channel 24 showed the overcrowded boat suddenly flipping over, spilling the passengers into the muddy brown river.

Dozens of people watching from the shore started shouting and screaming. The weather was calm at the time.

Thousands of Hindus in Muslim-majority Bangladesh visit the famous Bodeshwari Temple every year.

Sunday marked the start of Durga Puja, the biggest Hindu festival in Bangladesh — and also eastern India — drawing large crowds at the temple.

Last December, around 40 people perished when a packed three-storey ferry caught fire in southern Bangladesh.

A ferry sank in Dhaka in June 2020 after a collision with another vessel, killing at least 32 people.

And at least 78 people perished in 2015 when an overcrowded ship collided with a cargo vessel in a river west of the capital.