Afghanistan: UN panel issues progress report on anti-Taliban sanctions

The United Nations Security Council Committee monitoring sanctions imposed against the Taliban has gained useful information by working with Member States and UN agencies in carrying out its difficult task, according to a report released today in New York.

“The Committee and its secretariat accumulated the valuable knowledge and experience in administering a very complex and time-limited sanctions regime, accompanied by a monitoring mechanism,” states the report, which was submitted to the Council by the panel’s Chairman, Ambassador Alfonso Valdivieso of Colombia.

Covering the Committee’s activities over the past year, the document cites a growing awareness of the significance of the anti-Taliban sanctions, which were first imposed in 1999 and later tightened in 2000 in an attempt to force the group to close terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and to hand over Usama bin Laden, who had been indicted for the 1998 terrorist bombings of United States embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam.

“The importance of such a sanctions regime has been generally recognized in light of the impact of the terrorist attacks of September, 2001,” the report notes.

In a related development, the Committee decided yesterday to remove four entities – the Afghan Export Bank, Agricultural Development Bank of Afghanistan, Banke Millie Afghan and the Export Promotion Bank of Afghanistan – from the list of persons and entities subject to the sanctions because of their links to the Taliban or terrorist operatives.