Doha: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday that the Taliban had reaffirmed the promise to allow Afghans to leave by Afghanistan free after evacuation evacuation evacuation meetings.
US President Joe Biden has faced pressure in the middle of the report that several hundred people, also included Americans, have been prevented for a week from flying out of the airport in North Afghanistan.
The Taliban told the United States that “they will allow people with travel documents to leave freely,” Blinken said at a press conference in Doha where he and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met with the opposite number Qatar.
“We will hold them for it,” he added.
Qatar said that Kabul airport, mostly closed since the conclusion of Washington’s chaotic withdrawal from the country at the end of August, hopefully it will soon be reopened, potentially opening an important corridor to leave.
“All international communities are looking for the Taliban to enforce the commitment,” Blinken said, referring to the resolution of the UN Security Council which urged a safe passage.
Biden’s senior cabinet member on Monday with the ruler of Qatar Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani where they expressed Washington to Doha for his help with Afghanistan Airlift.
Qatar is a transit point for almost half of more than 120,000 people evacuated from Afghanistan in the last days of the US War 20 years when the Taliban took over.
Doha is the Taliban international diplomatic base even though Blinken’s helper said he had no plans to meet him as Washington instead of waiting to assess the group’s actions in power to determine the level of involvement.
The United States on Monday facilitated the evacuation of four Americans from the same family as land outside Afghanistan, the first departure arranged by Washington since military withdrawal.
A state department official said the Taliban was aware of the operation and did not disturb.
But non-governmental organizations say that around 600 to 1,300 people – including girls and US citizens – trapped at the airport in the northern city of Mazar-I-Sharif.
Marina Legree, founder and executive director of a small American non-governmental organization active in Afghanistan, told AFP that the Taliban did not allow anyone through.
Blinken said that the Taliban did not block people with legitimate travel documents but not all passengers on rented flight has a paper, denying there is a “situation such as being held hostage” in Mazar-I-Sharif.
He said there were unavoidable constraints to rent flights because the United States did not have personnel on the ground.
“We do not have the means to verify the accuracy of manifests, passenger identities on this aircraft, aviation security protocols, or where they plan to land – among other problems.
This is a real problem,” he said.
“We were involved when we talked to resolve this problem,” he said.
US officials said they were no longer controlling the airspace in Afghanistan and that the main airport in Kabul, was confiscated by the US military in August for evacuation, damaged.
The Qatar technical team was deployed to Kabul to assess the feasibility of the airport and began to prepare it to return to the operation to enable the evacuation and arrival of human beings needed badly.
Blinken in his meeting with the ruler of the Gulf State praised “Qatar’s extraordinary support in facilitating safe transit of US citizens, our partners and riskies in other Afghanistan,” said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Austin acknowledged that the withdrawal created obstacles but said the United States was committed to stopping threats from Afghanistan.
“There is no question (withdrawal) will make it more difficult to identify and involve threats originating from the region,” Austin said.