Albares asks “not to recognize the Taliban” but defends “interacting” in “very specific matters”

Points to “an international consensus” on the impossibility of channeling economic aid through the Taliban

MADRID 18 (EUROPE PRESS)

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, José Manuel Albares, reiterates that the international community “should not recognize the Taliban”, although it has opted to “interact” with the fundamentalists “in very specific matters”.

Albares has indicated during his participation in a round table on the situation in Afghanistan within the framework of the Munich Security Conference that among the issues in which there could be contacts is the delivery of humanitarian aid.

Thus, it has indicated that it must be guaranteed that humanitarian aid reaches the right people on the ground and not the combatants”, as well as working to “try to create a space for women and girls”, amid increasing restrictions against them. by the Taliban.

Albares has emphasized that there must be interaction with the Taliban to address “respect for Human Rights”, as well as to “achieve the departure of our collaborators from the country”.

“Spain spent 20 years in Afghanistan, until the last day that the Kabul airport operated,” he recalled, while noting that the Spanish authorities managed to get 4,000 collaborators out of the country “thanks to the help of friends like Pakistan and Qatar”.

In this way, Albares has emphasized the need to “interact” with the Taliban and “other countries in the region” to address the crisis in Afghanistan. “We cannot simply give up everything we have built for 20 years,” he argued.

The Spanish minister pointed out that through development cooperation aid, schools and infrastructures were built to improve the situation of the population, at the same time that he defended that “we must not accept that it is a parenthesis in the history of Afghanistan”.

On the contrary, he has pointed to “a consensus” at the international level on the impossibility of channeling economic aid through the Taliban. “There is a consensus, he would say, on humanitarian aid that we have to ensure that it gets to the right people on the ground,” she said.

“We are very aware that Afghanistan needs a certain amount of money to exist as a State,” he stressed, before specifying that the problem stems from the absence of “adequate people” at the head of the country to manage these funds.

“That is the real problem,” he said. “We want girls and boys to go to school,” she said, before acknowledging that “if there is no money, they will not be able to go, not because the Taliban do not want to, but because the teachers cannot be paid.” “Does this worry the Taliban? I think not. We are looking to square the circle,” she lamented.

In addition, he has pointed to a “real consensus” that “Afghanistan is important for the Afghan people, but also for the region.” “If Afghanistan destabilizes, Pakistan will suffer,” she warned, before advocating helping the region, which passes for “helping Afghanistan, even with the Taliban inside.”

In this way, Albares has indicated that “the most that can be done at this time” is to maintain a position “aligned with the UN”, at the same time that he has outlined that “the Taliban do not give space for anything else”.

“Once there is a minimum of security in Kabul, a discussion that we have within the EU, the EU and all member states want to return to help the Afghans. We must return together and united, almost like a united embassy,” has apostilled