BRUSSELS: Belgium said on Monday it had issued five visas to a Taliban delegation to attend an EU meeting on migration in Brussels, in what \u200bwould be the first time the EU has hosted the group since the Islamists returned to power in Afghanistan five years ago.<\/p>\n
The visas are restricted in both geographical scope and duration, allowing travel only to Belgium and for a single day, a Belgian foreign ministry spokesperson said, adding that the date of the visit would not be disclosed for security reasons.<\/p>\n
Two European officials said the delegation had been granted one-day visas valid only on Tuesday, June 23.<\/p>\n
The Commission last month invited Taliban officials to Brussels to discuss deportations of \u200cAfghan migrants, despite warnings \u200cfrom human rights groups that such engagement could put Afghans \u200bat \u200crisk \u2060and undermine \u200bcore \u2060EU values.<\/p>\n
The Commission said the meeting is technical and does not constitute recognition of Taliban rule.<\/p>\n
\u201cMember States are looking into ways to return persons who have committed serious crimes and who are possibly a security threat. So this is the initiative that the Commission is now following up on,\u201d Commission spokesman Markus Lammert told the EU\u2019s daily press briefing on Monday.<\/p>\n
According to a letter seen by Reuters and addressed to Abdul Qaher Balkhi, a Taliban foreign ministry spokesman, \u2060it will focus on \u201cthe return and readmission of Afghan nationals without a right \u200cto stay in the European Union.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since returning to \u200cpower, the Taliban have steadily curtailed rights, restricting women\u2019s freedom \u200bof movement, banning girls from education beyond \u200cprimary school, and enforcing morality laws that limit free expression and access to employment. RIGHTS ORGANIZATIONS \u200cASK TO ABANDON PLAN<\/p>\n
Rights organizations have asked the European Union to abandon its plans to talk with the Taliban.<\/p>\n
\u201cAny engagement with the Taliban needs to prioritize protecting human rights and accountability \u2014 not deporting people to danger there,\u201d said Fereshta Abbasi, Afghanistan researcher at Human Rights Watch.<\/p>\n
The EU has not identified which \u200cTaliban representatives were invited to the meeting. Several senior Taliban leaders are under EU sanctions.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe desperate scenes of people \u2014 including EU staff \u2014 fleeing \u2060Afghanistan are a \u2060recent memory. It is unconscionable that the EU would now try and deport people to Afghanistan, which has only become more dangerous in the meantime,\u201d said Eve Geddie, director of Amnesty International\u2019s European Institutions Office.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BRUSSELS: Belgium said on Monday it had issued five visas to a Taliban delegation to attend an EU meeting on migration in Brussels, in what \u200bwould be the first time the EU has hosted the group since the Islamists returned to power in Afghanistan five years ago. The visas are restricted in both geographical scope …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":99416,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99405"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99417,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99405\/revisions\/99417"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}