Taliban minister planned India visit; Pak-led UN panel rejects travel ban waiver

NEW new delhi: taleban strange government minister Amir Khan Muttaqi called away a planned visit to India this month after failing to secure a waiver to a travel ban imposed under UN Security Council sanctions, people familiar with the matter said.If the visit had gone ahead, Muttaqi would have been the first minister from the Taliban setup in Kabul to travel to India since the group seized power in Afghanistan after the collapse of the Ashraf Ghani government in August 2021. All Taliban leaders sanctioned by the UN Security Council have to secure a waiver for foreign travel.Pakistan currently heads the 1988 sanctions committee of the UN Security Council that oversees the implementation of the travel ban, an assets freeze, and an arms embargo related to sanctioned Taliban leaders, and the people cited above said on condition of anonymity that Islamabad is believed to have been behind the move to deny Muttaqi a waiver.Also Read: Trump says India, Russia ‘lost’ to ‘darkest China’. New Delhi says no commentsThe 1988 sanctions committee includes all 15 members of the Security Council, and a waiver can be blocked if even one member objects to it. Muttaqi’s planned visit to Pakistan last month was called off after the US reportedly objected to a waiver.When external affairs ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal was asked at a weekly media briefing about reports of Muttaqi’s planned visit to India, he replied: “As you are aware, we have longstanding ties with the people of Afghanistan. India continues to support the aspirations and developmental needs of the Afghan people.“We continue to have engagements with Afghan authorities. If there is an update on this account, we will share it with you.”The people said a waiver for Muttaqi was sought from the 1988 sanctions committee but it wasn’t granted. The planned visit to India was being seen as a follow-up to a phone call between Muttaqi and external affairs minister S Jaishankar in May – the first such interaction between the two sides.Also Read: India will ‘undoubtedly’ keep buying Russian oil, says Nirmala SitharamanThe phone conversation also built on a meeting between Muttaqi and foreign secretary Vikram Misri in Dubai in January and came against the backdrop of tensions between India and Pakistan. The Taliban had also condemned the Pahalgam terror attack in April.India has quietly built up its contacts with the Taliban leadership in recent years, mainly to protect regional interests at a time when China has sought to expand its footprint in Afghanistan, and Muttaqi and Jaishankar had spoken on the phone again on September 1 after New Delhi dispatched relief materials to help the victims of a devastating earthquake that struck the Afghan province of Kunar.The people said that Muttaqi’s visit had only been called off, and it is expected to go ahead in the coming months once the issue of the waiver on the travel ban is addressed.