Britain says it is too early to decide on working with Taliban

London: British government has made it clear that it was too early to decide on how to work with the Taliban and co-operation in the future will also depend on the Taliban upholding its pledge to respect human rights.

‘At this stage it is too early to dictate if and how we would work with the Taliban going forward. A lot will depend on their actions from now. As we have said throughout, we intend to put pressure on them to uphold these standards and claims’, said a spokesman of British Prime Minister Borris Johnson.

British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab claimed that the NATO mission in Afghanistan had brought better education, fewer maternal deaths and  diminished terrorist threat in the country. He also welcomed the UN Security Council’s demand that the Taliban protect those gains by upholding human rights and denying a safe haven to terrorists.

‘‘There were real tangible gains for all that sacrifice. We hadn’t seen, in those 20 years, Afghanistan used as a base for terrorist attacks abroad. We had, with our aid money and our wider development policy, got 10 million more children into education. If you look at the maternal mortality rate … that was down by close to 50 per cent’, said Raab.

’That is a challenge, which is why we are holding, very squarely, the Taliban to their explicit assurances. They must allow safe passage, not just for our nationals, but other Afghans – particularly vulnerable ones – who wish to leave’, Rabb said about evacuation process as the NATO forces had no access to Kabul airport as the US military exited out of Afghanistan.

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Meanwhile, the head of the UK’s Royal Air Force, Air Chief Marshal Sir Mike Wigston said that the forces will carry out air strikes to face IS-K. ‘What this boils down to is that we’ve got to be able to play a global role in the global coalition to defeat Daesh … whether it’s strike or whether it’s moving troops or equipment into a particular country at scale and at speed’, he said.

Earlier United Nations Security Council asked to provide a  safe passage out of Afghanistan for those wishing to leave the country. The resolution was put forward by Britain, France and the US. It was passed after China and Russia, who have veto power in the council, abstained.

‘This is of the utmost importance to us. Everybody must be allowed to safely leave Afghanistan, for whatever reason, whenever they want, by air or by land’, said said US ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield.