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After the first high level diplomatic meeting of it’s kind was held in Turkey between the Turkish administration and the Taliban administration of Afghanistan, the Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu once again urged Western countries to ‘get engaged with’ the Taliban administration and called for the unblocking of frozen Afghan bank accounts.
While the acting minister of culture and information, acting deputy minister of the interior and the head of the Taliban intelligence agency were present in the Taliban delegation led by the acting minister of foreign affairs Mawlawi Amir Khan Mutaqi, top officials from the Turkish Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of the Interior and the National Intelligence Agency (MİT) took part in the Turkish delegation led by Çavuşoğlu.
“They provided us with information on the recent situation in Afghanistan. Then we expressed our opinions in a friendly manner, Çavuşoğlu said in a press conference after the meeting.
“We have been explaining to the international community the importance of getting engaged with the Taliban administration. And actually, the international community, apart from various individual stances, has come to adopt this attitude. Getting engaged is something different from recognising an administration.”
Çavuşoğlu elaborated on his words saying that the priority was to provide the Afghan people with humanitarian aid.
“We have already started doing this through the Red Crescent. Recently we’ve delivered 33,000 tonnes of aid to Afghanistan via Pakistan,” he said.
“Another priority is to avoid the collapse of the Afghan economy. We’ve been saying that the states which have frozen Afghanistan’s financial assets should act more flexibly in order that wages can be paid. This was another issue we were updated about in the meeting.”
