Not long ago, you couldn't go a week without a North Korean missile launch. But the country has been quieter for a while, perhaps while it dealt with COVID or challenging economic conditions.
Normal service has been very much resumed, though. And, just like buses, after a long wait two launches have come at once.
Over the weekend, the regime announced it had successfully tested a long range cruise missile, one it described as a "strategic weapon of great significance" - code for potentially nuclear capable.
That may or may not be the case and US and South Korean intelligence will be looking closely.
There's no doubt about today's launch of two ballistic missiles. Unlike the cruise missile, which was first made public by North Korean state media, both Japanese and South Korean officials reported this launch.
That indicates these were bigger missiles they were able to track.
The timing is interesting. Nuclear negotiators from the US, South Korea and Japan are meeting in Tokyo.
More unusually, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is in Seoul to discuss the stalled nuclear diplomacy with President Moon Jae-in.
China is North Korea's most important friend. Loosing off missiles while he's in town just over the border may be regarded as a warning to remember whose side he's supposed to be on, and of the capability and threat that North Korea poses more generally.
Then there was the judgment last month by the UN that North Korea has restarted its nuclear reactor, potentially producing plutonium for warheads.
Add in a big military parade in the capital Pyongyang - where we saw a new, slimmed down Kim Jong Un - and the clear message is that North Korea is back in business.
The issue had been parked for the beginning of the Biden administration, while the world grappled with COVID-19. North Korea's recent actions are a reminder that it is a long way from being solved.
Joe Biden suggested he hold a face-to-face summit with Chinese president Xi Jinping during a 90-minute call last week but failed to secure an agreement from his counterpart, leading some US officials to conclude that Beijing is continuing to play hardball with Washington.
The US president proposed to Xi that the leaders hold the summit in an effort to break an impasse in US-China relations, but multiple people briefed on the call said the Chinese leader did not take him up on the offer and instead insisted Washington adopt a less strident tone towards Beijing.
The White House had portrayed the call — which took place at Biden’s request seven months after their first telephone conversation — as a chance to test if Xi was willing to engage seriously after several diplomatic meetings between US and Chinese officials garnered little progress.
Five people briefed on the call said that while Xi had used less abrasive language than his top diplomats had done this year, his overall message to Biden was that the US must tone down its rhetoric.
Biden has taken a harsh line on China, criticising its treatment of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, its crackdown on the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong and its military activity around Taiwan. Beijing has responded by accusing the Biden administration of interfering in China’s core strategic interests.
A sixth person familiar with the situation said Biden had floated the summit as one of several possibilities for follow-on engagement with Xi, and that the US president had not expected an immediate response.
One US official briefed on the conversation said that while Xi did not engage with the idea of a summit, the White House believed this was partly due to concerns about Covid-19. Xi has not left China since he went to Myanmar in early 2020 before the outbreak of the pandemic.
The US had considered the G20 gathering in Italy in October for a possible summit, but Chinese media have suggested that Xi may not attend. He will also not attend the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation meeting this week in Tajikistan, where China, Russia, India, Pakistan and central Asian countries will discuss Afghanistan.
Another person familiar with the Biden-Xi call said it was conceivable that the Chinese president just did not want to commit at this particular point in time. A different person said it was possible that the two sides could agree to a video call — a step up from a phone call — around the time of the G20. But three people said the US was disappointed with Xi’s apparent lack of interest in a summit.
The White House declined to comment before publication of this article but Jake Sullivan, US national security adviser, later said the account of the Biden-Xi call was not accurate.
“This is not an accurate portrayal of the call. Period,” Sullivan said in a statement. “As we’ve said, the presidents discussed the importance of being able to have private discussions between the two leaders, and we’re going to respect that.”
Chinese accounts of the call emphasised that it had been initiated by Biden, and quoted Xi as saying that US policies had caused “serious difficulties”. They also noted that the US “looks forward to more discussions and co-operation” with China, in language that implied Washington was pushing harder for engagement than Beijing.
A day after the call, the Financial Times reported Biden was considering allowing Taiwan to change the name of its office in the US, from Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office to “Taiwan Representative Office. The report prompted an angry response from China, which fears that such a name change would bolster Taiwan’s claim to be a sovereign country.
Bonnie Glaser, a China expert at the German Marshall Fund, said it was difficult to interpret Xi’s reluctance to hold an in-person summit.
“It may be politically risky for Xi to engage with President Biden without certainty that he can get something from Biden. He may calculate that it is safer to only have interactions in this period at lower levels,” Glaser said. “But there is also the Covid factor, and we don’t know how much weight to attach to that.”
The practice of dolphin hunting in the Faroe Islands has come under scrutiny after more than 1,400 of the mammals were killed in what was believed to be a record catch.
The pod of white-sided dolphins was driven into the largest fjord in the North Atlantic territory on Sunday.
Boats herded them into shallow waters at Skalabotnur beach in Eysturoy, where they were killed with knives.
The carcases were pulled ashore and distributed to locals for consumption.
Warning: This article contains graphic details and images some may find distressing.
Footage of the hunt shows dolphins thrashing around in waters turned red with blood as hundreds of people watch on from the beach.
Known as the grind (or Grindadrap in Faroese), the hunting of sea mammals - primarily whales - is a tradition that has been practised for hundreds of years on the remote Faroe Islands.
The Faroese government says about 600 pilot whales are caught every year on average. White-sided dolphins are caught in lower numbers, such as 35 in 2020 and 10 in 2019.
Supporters say whaling is a sustainable way of gathering food from nature and an important part of their cultural identity. Animal rights activists have long disagreed, deeming the slaughter cruel and unnecessary.
Sunday's hunt was no different, as international conservation groups rounded on the hunters to condemn the killing.
But the scale of the killing at Skalabotnur beach has shocked many locals and even drawn criticism from groups involved in the practice.
Bjarni Mikkelsen, a marine biologist from the Faroe Islands, put the reported death toll into perspective.
He said records showed that this was the largest number of dolphins ever killed on one day in the Faroe Islands, a autonomous territory of Denmark.
He said the previous record was 1,200 in 1940. The next-largest catches were 900 in 1879, 856 in 1873, and 854 in 1938, Mr Mikkelsen said.
On Sunday night a super-pod of 1428 Atlantic White-Sided Dolphins was driven for many hours and for around 45 km by speed boats and jet-skis into the shallow water at Skálabotnur beach in the Danish Faroe Islands, where every single one of them was killed. https://t.co/uo2fAPhCDq
In an interview with the BBC, the chairman of the Faroese Whalers Association, Olavur Sjurdarberg, acknowledged that killing was excessive.
Why were that many dolphins killed, then?
'People are in shock'
"It was a big mistake," said Mr Sjurdarberg, who did not participate in the hunt. "When the pod was found, they estimated it to be only 200 dolphins."
Only when the killing process started did they find out the true size of the pod, he said.
"Somebody should have known better," he said. "Most people are in shock about what happened."
Even so, according to Mr Sjurdarberg, the catch was approved by the local authorities and no laws were broken.
Such hunts are regulated in the Faroe Islands. They are non-commercial and are organised on a community level, often spontaneously when someone spots a pod of the mammals.
To take part, hunters must have an official training certificate that qualifies them to kill the animals.
'Legal but not popular'
Killing white-sided dolphins is "legal but it's not popular", said Sjurdur Skaale, a Danish MP for the Faroe Islands.
He visited Skalabotnur beach to speak to locals on Monday. "People were furious," he said.
Still, he defended the hunt, which he said was "humane" if done in the right way.
That involves a specially designed lance, which is used to cut the spinal cord of the whale or dolphin before the neck is cut.
Using this method, it should take "less than a second to kill a whale", Mr Skaale said.
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"From an animal welfare point of view, it's a good way of killing meat - far better than keeping cows and pigs imprisoned," he said.
"Grindadrap hunts can turn into drawn-out, often disorganised massacres," the group says.
"The pilot whales and dolphins can be killed over long periods in front of their relatives while beached on sand, rocks or just struggling in shallow water."
Braced for 'a big backlash'
Surveys suggest that most people are opposed to the mass slaughter of dolphins in the Faroe Islands.
On Sunday, the national reaction was "one of bewilderment and shock because of the extraordinarily big number", said Trondur Olsen, a journalist for Faroese public broadcaster Kringvarp Foroya.
"We did a quick poll yesterday asking whether we should continue to kill these dolphins. Just over 50% said no, and just over 30% said yes," he said.
In contrast, he said, a separate poll suggested that 80% said they wanted to continue with the killing of pilot whales.
The polls provide a snapshot of public opinion towards the killing of sea mammals.
Getty Images
Criticism of the Faroese hunt has ebbed and flowed over the years. The hunt is brought to wider attention from time to time, as it was by the popular Seaspiracy documentary on Netflix earlier this year.
This time, though, locals say the reaction - especially within the whaling community - has been unusually damning.
"There's been a lot of international attention. My suspicion is that people are bracing themselves for a big backlash," Olsen said.
"This is a good time for campaigners to put even more pressure on. It will be different this time because the numbers are very big."
Many of the women of Afghanistan are frightened right now. And those who worked for the foreigners who've pulled out of the country, are even more so.
They are some of the top Taliban targets and too many of them are telling us how the Talibanare going from door to door, trying to find those who once worked for the "enemies".
Officially, there's an amnesty. Unofficially, there are scores being settled and intimidation is rife.
Image:There are many more people out in the market than we've seen in the previous few days
"Why did I work for the US?" one 24-year-old woman asks us.
"That [when we are in] such a situation they are not responding us (sic)… not hearing us? It's a waste of my work experience, all those years. It's a waste of effort, it's a waste of struggle, it's a waste of everything right now. I even carry some kind of hate in my heart for them."
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She and her sister have travelled with their uncle to where we are staying. They were too scared to talk to us openly.
They saw us filming in a market in the capital and the younger sister (who we will call "Tabasum" for her safety), tells us she watched us for two hours before summoning up the courage to pull Sky producer Chris Cunningham to one side.
"Please, I want you to interview me," she told him. "I can't talk here because our lives are in danger."
Image:Speaking to women at the market
It has taken tremendous bravery to speak up at all. We are just a few metres away from an armed Taliban checkpoint. The fighters who are patrolling through the market, with weapons slung over their shoulders, tell us how we are seeing a different, better side of Kabul.
"A few weeks ago you would not have been able to come here because of the security," the Talib tells us. There appears to be no irony in his voice.
There are many more people out in the market than we've seen in the previous few days. And there is a marked increase in the number of women in public.
Initially, the Taliban instructed women to stay indoors "for security reasons". But while we are here there are many thronging the stalls.
Image:Talibs at the market checkpoint
We notice they are all wearing long flowing dresses or coats and headscarves or hijabs - a number are in the all-enveloping burka. Many appear to have a male companion (mahram) shepherding the groups of females around.
We ask the Taliban commander manning the checkpoint what he does to enforce any dress code. He replies that so long as the women adhere to Sharia law, there's no issue.
Another Talib interrupts. "It's an Islamic society," he says. "And there is no need to tell them to wear hijab, we haven't had to ask them…everyone is obeying that now."
When you're the ones holding the guns, perhaps you don't need to persuade too hard.
Image:Initially, the Taliban instructed women to stay indoors 'for security reasons'
In the room where we are secretly meeting the young women, they spread out their paperwork which shows extensive links with USAID and other foreign aid groups like CARE, which has a base in Britain.
There are 25 members of their extended family with eight of them children. Almost all of the adults used to work for foreign aid groups or they are female teachers, now in danger.
The young women's mother is a principal at a girls' high school.
Image:Street children at the Taliban checkpoint
"Look at this death threat she received from the Taliban," Murro shows us. She flicks through her phone to find the scrawled letter from the Taliban which was investigated and verified by the previous administration.
The letter says: "Our main aim and work is to kill all students, teachers and the principal."
They talk about their mother opening the door to their home a few days after Kabul fell to the Islamist group to find a gaggle of armed Taliban outside.
"They just demanded food and came in," Tabasum says. "I was standing in my bedroom just shaking. I could not believe it."
Image:Tabasum (not her real name) speaking to Sky's Alex Crawford
The Taliban fighters began to regularly march into the house demanding food, or tea and asking questions about who they worked for.
"Did you work for the old government," one Talib asked them. "There are rumours you worked for the foreigners…"
"We decided we needed to move then," Tabasum says. They've been on the run ever since.
They show us photographs with the former US first lady Laura Bush taken in Washington DC. There are others standing proudly with British soldiers.
"We love our country. We were proud to work for Afghanistanand build a new future," says 24-year-old Murro. "I empowered 900 women during my career with USAID. Now what am I? I am not empowered. I am told I cannot work and I'm told how to dress.
"I worry about the future, not just my future but my family's future and the country's future. Have you ever felt you are living in a country that is not your country anymore? That's how I feel right now."
Image:Tabasum (not her real name) has spoken out about her experiences
They tell us of how the friends and partners they worked with for years have now turned their backs on them. How none of their emails and applications for asylum are being answered or even responded to.
WhatsApps go unread, calls are not picked up.
Tabasum was one day away from finishing her business degree. She was due to complete her thesis at one of Kabul's top universities on Monday.
The airport suicide bombing which killed nearly two hundred including 13 US service personnel happened on the Sunday before.
"In one day, my life changed. All the lecturers left the country. The university is now empty. All four years of my studying is wasted."
She had a job but her superiors rang her up and told her it wasn't safe for her to come in as a woman and that she should stay at home. Almost half the staff were women, now all sitting at home.
"They don't want me because I'm a girl," Tabasum says. "I don't have the right to come out of my home now without a male. Why? Because this is an inequality. I don't have the same rights as a boy. I am nothing for them."
"I have become invisible. I used to have a job. I am educated. I don't need any man. But now I am just nothing."
Image:The Taliban has made reassurances that it respects women's rights
She's wearing a full-length coat and black hijab. "Before I never wore a hijab," she says. "I wore T-shirt and jeans. Now I can't go anywhere without covering my head and wearing these clothes."
Despite all the reassurances from the Taliban that they respect women's rights, the women of Afghanistan do not believe them.
And the Taliban are dealing with a tougher, better educated, more liberal Afghan woman now - many of them in their 20s or 30s.
Image:The Taliban checkpoint at night
They have aspirations and educated minds which has put fire in their stomachs and sent courage soaring through their veins. We've seen them take to the streets to fight for their rights - and not back down even when staring down the barrel of a gun.
The Taliban fighters may be manning the checkpoints and prowling the area with guns but the Afghan women are not prepared to return to the times their mothers endured.
We set out to meet a female activist and mother of three who we interviewed before the Taliban took control. We will call her "Fatima".
She also worked for a series of foreign NGO's focused on running female empowerment courses and skill projects for women.
Image:Colourful clothes are on sale at markets
She too received written death threats from the Taliban as well as threatening texts and frightening phone calls.
She told us weeks before the Taliban marched into the capital that she was in fear of her life and was terrified her three young children were going to be harmed as the Taliban had warned of killing her whole family.
She'd taken refuge in a women's shelter then. Since then even that's not safe. The Taliban have moved in and she's moving constantly now with her family from friends' home to friends' home.
She was cleared to be evacuated by the British military and received a confirmation email but hours later got another warning her not to travel to the airport or the Baron Hotel because of a precise security threat which turned out to be the suicide bomber who blew himself up the following day.
Image:Taliban checkpoint
Since then she's been getting increasingly desperate as evacuation flights have been halted.
Those left behind who did so much service for Afghanistan and worked with such faith with the foreign partners, they never expected to leave so hurriedly, are feeling forgotten and in many ways betrayed.
"I prefer to die at sea at the hands of human traffickers trying to escape here than be killed by the Taliban," Fatima tells us. "But I'm a prisoner here right now."
The Taliban has thanked the world for pledging more than a billion dollars in emergency aid to Afghanistan, and urged the US to show 'heart' by donating more.
Amir Khan Muttaqi, the regime's acting foreign minister, told a press conference the hardline Islamist group would spend donor money wisely and use it to alleviate poverty.
He was speaking a day after the United Nations said a total of $1.2billion in aid had been pledged to Afghanistan, $64million of which came from the US.
Amir Khan Muttaqi (pictured), the regime's acting foreign minister, told a press conference the terror group would spend donor money wisely and use it to alleviate poverty
'The Islamic Emirate will try its best to deliver this aid to the needy people in a completely transparent manner,' Muttaqi said.
He also asked Washington to show appreciation for the Taliban allowing the US to complete a troop withdrawal and evacuation of more than 120,000 people last month.
'America is a big country, they need to have a big heart,' he said.
Muttaqi said Afghanistan, which is also facing a drought, had already received aid from countries such as Pakistan, Qatar and Uzbekistan, but did not give further details.
He said he had held discussions with China's ambassador on the coronavirus vaccine and other humanitarian causes.
Beijing last week promised $31million worth of food and health supplies, and on Friday said it would send a first batch of 3million coronavirus vaccines.
Pakistan sent food and medicine, and it called for Afghan assets frozen abroad to be released. Iran said it had dispatched an air cargo of aid.
'Past mistakes must not be repeated. The Afghan people must not be abandoned,' said Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, whose country has close relations with the Taliban and would most likely bear the brunt of an exodus of refugees.
The Taliban asked Washington to show appreciation for the Taliban allowing the US to complete a troop withdrawal
Both China and Russia said the main burden of helping Afghanistan out of crisis should lie with Western countries.
'The US and its allies have a greater obligation to extend economic, humanitarian and livelihood assistance,' said Chen Xu, China's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva.
The United States pledged $64million in new humanitarian assistance at the conference, while Norway pledged an extra $11.5million.
Since the Taliban takeover, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund have halted Afghanistan's access to funding, while the United States has also frozen cash held in its reserve for Kabul.
UN chief Antonio Guterres on Monday said he believed aid could be used as leverage with the Islamist hardliners to exact improvements on human rights, amid fears of a return to the brutal rule that characterised the first Taliban regime from 1996 to 2001.
'It is impossible to provide humanitarian assistance inside Afghanistan without engaging with the de facto authorities,' the UN secretary-general told ministers attending the Geneva talks.
'It is very important to engage with the Taliban at the present moment.'
Since the Taliban takeover, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund have halted Afghanistan's access to funding
The Taliban have promised a milder form of rule this time around, but have moved swiftly to crush dissent, including firing in the air to disperse recent protests by women calling for the right to education and work.
UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet said she was 'dismayed by the lack of inclusivity of the so-called caretaker cabinet, which includes no women and few non-Pashtuns'.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has previously warned that the Taliban would have to earn legitimacy and support, after talks with allies on how to present a united front.
The caretaker cabinet, he said, would be judged 'by its actions'.
Meanwhile, Afghans are resorting to selling their household goods to raise money to pay for essentials, and bustling second-hand goods markets have mushroomed in most urban centres.
Ajmal Ahmady, former acting governor of the Afghan central bank, tweeted last week that the country no longer had access to around $9 billion in aid, loans and assets.
Even before the Taliban's seizure of Kabul last month, half the population - or 18 million people - depended on aid. That looks set to increase due to drought and shortages.
Around $200million of the new money is earmarked for the UN World Food Programme, which found that 93 per cent of the 1,600 Afghans it surveyed in August and September were not getting enough to eat.
WFP Executive Director David Beasley said 40 per cent of Afghanistan's wheat crop had been lost, the price of cooking oil had doubled, and most people anyway had no way of getting money.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has previously warned that the Taliban would have to earn legitimacy and support
While banks have started reopening, the queues for withdrawals are extremely long, and more importantly, no one who depended on the government for a salary - from civil servants to police - has been paid since July.
'Fourteen million people, one out of three, are marching to the brink of starvation. They don't know where their next meal is,' Beasley said.
'If we are not very careful, we could truly, truly enter into the abyss in catastrophic conditions, worse than what we see now.'
The UN World Health Organization, also part of the appeal, wants to shore up hundreds of health facilities at risk of closure after donors backed out.
Antonio Vitorino, head of the International Organization for Migration, said the Afghan medical system was 'on the verge of collapse', and WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that gains made towards eradicating polio and vaccinating against Covid-19 could unravel.
UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi warned that there could 'very soon' be far greater displacement than the estimated half a million who have already sought refuge elsewhere in Afghanistan this year.
'The physical distance between our nations and Afghanistan shouldn't mislead us,' Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu added.
'A humanitarian and security crisis in Afghanistan will have direct implications across the globe. We should take collective action now.'
The Taliban ruled Afghanistan according to their strict interpretation of Islamic law from 1996-2001 and were toppled in an invasion led by the United States, which accused them of sheltering militants behind the Sept. 11 attacks.
They swept back to power last month in a lightning advance as the last U.S.-led NATO troops pulled out and the forces of the Western-backed government melted away.
With billions of dollars of aid flows abruptly ending due to Western antipathy and distrust towards the Taliban, donors had a 'moral obligation' to keep helping Afghans after a 20-year engagement, several speakers in Geneva said.
But UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet, also in Geneva, underlined the Western misgivings.
She accused the Taliban of breaking recent promises by once more ordering women to stay at home rather than go to work, keeping teenage girls out of school, and persecuting former opponents.
A British man who was eating lunch at a restaurant had a hood stuck over him by armed police who handcuffed and bundled him away after mistaking him for a Mafia crime boss.
The man, who has only been identified as Mark L from Liverpool, was with his son and friend when he was arrested in The Hague, Netherlands, his lawyer said.
The 54-year-old Formula One fan had been staying in the country after watching the Dutch Grand Prix.
His arrest came after Italy asked Dutch authorities to execute an international arrest warrant for Sicilian crime boss Matteo Messina Denaro.
Image:Armed police in the Netherlands arrested the British man while he was eating lunch. File pic: iStock
Denaro, nicknamed 'Diabolik', has been in hiding since 1993 and is wanted for 50 murders.
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He is the "capo di tutti capi" - the boss of all bosses - of the Sicilian Mafia.
The British man, who was arrested last Wednesday, was eventually saved from a maximum security jail in Vught, a municipality in the south of the Netherlands, by his Dutch lawyer, Leon van Kleef.
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"I was always convinced he was not it. It would have been a genius of an Italian to have such a strong Liverpool accent", Mr van Kleef said.
"You can imagine. He had anger and disbelief and laughter because it is ludicrous. He is a normal Formula One fan."
He explained: "Sometimes in the practise of law things that might go quick take ages. I went to the press in the hope of speeding things up because normally it's a matter of time."
Mr van Kleef added that the Briton did not want to be identified and would not comment on the case.
Kabul, Afghanistan – Afghanistan’s acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi has criticised the United States for its actions towards the new Taliban government and for severing economic assistance after the group seized power last month.
In his first address to the media since the Taliban announced its new caretaker government last week, Muttaqi said on Tuesday that the group would not allow “any country” to impose sanctions or embargoes on Afghanistan, including the US.
“[We] helped the US until the evacuation of their last person, but unfortunately, the US, instead of thanking us, froze our assets,” he said.
Since the Taliban took control of the Afghan capital, Kabul on August 15 as former President Ashraf Ghani fled the country, the US Federal Reserve, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have cut off Afghanistan’s access to funds, resulting in a widespread liquidity crunch in the cash-dependent economy.
Muttaqi thanked the international community for pledging more than $1bn of aid for Afghanistan at a UN donor conference on Monday.
“We welcome the pledge of emergency aid funding committed to Afghanistan during yesterday’s meeting hosted by the UN in Geneva,” he said.
Calls to engage with Taliban
No government has yet agreed to formally recognise the Taliban-led administration in Kabul, which could further imperil the Afghan economy, which has been highly dependent on foreign aid for the last 20 years. According to the World Bank, foreign aid makes up some 40 percent of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product.
Muttaqi said the government was willing to work with any country, including the US, but said it will not be “dictated to” by any state. Last week, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said France “refuses to recognise or have any type of relationship” with a Taliban-led government in Afghanistan.
Guterres remarked at the donor conference that it would be “impossible” to provide humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan without engaging with the Taliban.
“I do believe it is very important to engage with the Taliban at the present moment for all aspects that concern the international community,” he said.
He told ministers that believed aid could be used as leverage with the Taliban to achieve improvements on human rights, amid fears of a return to the brutal rule that characterised the Taliban’s first stint in power from 1996 to 2001.
The European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on Tuesday said the EU has “no other option but to engage with the Taliban”.
Muttaqi urged countries around the world to open formal relations with the Taliban-led government, citing an end to war in the country.
“Security is being maintained across the country,” he said, and stressed that Afghanistan was open for foreign investment.
Muttaqi also said the government would not allow Afghanistan to be used as a base for armed groups to launch attacks on other countries.
Pledge to respect rights
In another assurance to the international community, Muttaqi stated that all Afghans are free to leave the nation if they possess the necessary documentation. Activists have accused the Taliban of keeping Afghans, including those with proper documentation, from leaving the country during the international evacuation efforts ahead of the August 31 foreign troop withdrawal deadline.
He called reservations expressed by Paris and other capitals, “unfair and unjust,” before restating that the interim government will respect all human rights, including those of women.
However, in recent weeks, the Taliban has come under heavy criticism for its violent crackdown on protests and media outlets covering recent demonstrations in the country.
Despite his criticisms of Washington, whom he accused of destroying Afghan property, including at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport, Muttaqi expressed the Taliban’s gratitude towards nations including Qatar, Pakistan and Uzbekistan for their delivery of aid to the nation. He promised to equally distribute aid among the Afghan people.
A vendor selling Taliban flags stands next to posters of Taliban leaders Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar and Amir Khan Muttaqi, left, as he waits for customers along a street in Kabul [File: Aamir Qureshi/AFP]
A vendor selling Taliban flags stands next to posters of Taliban leaders Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar and Amir Khan Muttaqi, left, as he waits for customers along a street in Kabul [File: Aamir Qureshi/AFP]