(Washington) About 100 countries announced on Sunday that they had received a pledge from the Taliban that they would allow all foreigners and Afghan citizens with permits to settle elsewhere, even after the scheduled withdrawal of US forces on Tuesday.
These countries wrote: “We have received assurances from the Taliban that all foreign nationals as well as any Afghan national with travel authorization issued by our country will be allowed to proceed safely and orderly to points of departure and leave the country,” including the United States, Germany, France or the United Kingdom.
“We are all committed to ensuring that our fellow citizens, our citizens or residents, our employees, Afghans, who have worked with us, and those at risk, can continue to travel freely to destinations outside Afghanistan,” they added. release.
“We will continue to hand over documents that allow travel to some Afghans,” they say, saying they have a “Taliban commitment that they will be able to travel to our countries.”
“We take note of the Taliban’s public statements confirming this agreement,” concludes the press release, also signed by the European Union and NATO.
China and Russia are not among the signatories.
Joe Biden’s National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Sunday that US citizens who chose to stay for now “will not be stuck in Afghanistan.”
“We will make sure that we have a mechanism to get them out of the country if they want to return in the future,” he told Fox, noting that “the Taliban have made commitments in this regard.”
French President Emmanuel Macron told the Journal du Dimanche newspaper, a project he considered “fully achievable”, that France and the United Kingdom would appeal to the United Nations on Monday for the creation of a protected area in Kabul that would allow humanitarian operations to continue.