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| Five Taliban taken off UN sanctions list |
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| UNITED NATIONS (APP): Five Taliban members, including a former Afghan ambassador to the UN, have been taken off a UN sanctions terrorism list, Austria's UN mission said on Friday.
The five were Abdul Satar Paktin; Abdul Hakim Mujahid Muhammad Awrang, a former Afghan envoy to the UN; Abdul Salam Zaeef, author of "My life with the Taliban" and two officials now deceased.
The deceased Taliban members were identified as Abdul Samad Khaksar and Muhammad Islam Mohammadi, according to a statement released by Austria, which chairs the panel monitoring the list.
The move followed a review of the list of Taliban and al Qaeda members maintained by a Security Council committee. Two of the five were delisted because they were dead, the diplomat said.
Afghanistan had pressed the committee to take some names off the list as part of a scheduled update. A "peace Jirga" in Afghanistan last month recommended negotiations with moderate Taliban leaders and other insurgents to end a worsening nine-year war in the country.
Diplomats said Afghan President Hamid Karzai had been seeking the delisting of about a dozen Taliban, either because they had joined the government side or because they were dead.
But Russia, which sits on the committee along with other Security Council members, had been cautious about deleting names, they said. |
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