KABUL, (AFP) — Afghan President Hamid Karzai asked a visiting UN security council delegation on Tuesday to remove the names of some Taliban members from a terror blacklist, the government said.
Karzai met the 15-member committee and requested they “remove names of those Taliban who are not linked to Al-Qaeda”, the president’s office said.
The UN visit came after a landmark peace meeting in Afghanistan early this month produced a 16-point resolution and called for removing militant leaders from the list.
The jirga advised the government to seek the removal of names — including those of Mullah Mohammad Omar and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar — from the UN Security Council blacklist compiled after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Omar has been supreme leader of the Taliban movement since it emerged in the early 1990s while Hekmatyar, former Afghan prime minister and warlord, is currently waging an insurgency separate to the Taliban.
The list designated as terrorists Taliban and Al-Qaeda leaders who were based in Afghanistan at the time, and helped to provide a UN-sanctioned justification for the US-led invasion of the country in November 2001.
The Taliban, ousted by the 2001 invasion, have vowed to boycott any peace negotiations until the 142,000 US-led foreign troops leave Afghanistan.