UN refuses sanctions exemption for Ariana

Dawn
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 29: A UN committee that monitors sanctions against Afghanistan rejected on Friday a request for a total exemption on behalf of Ariana Afghan Airlines, the main target of the curbs, a committee source said.

The sanctions, adopted unanimously by the Security Council last October, went into force on Nov 14 against Taliban rulers for failing to surrender Osama bin Laden for trial on charges of plotting the August 1998 bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Ariana was the prime target of the sanctions, which require countries to ban flights by planes owned, operated or leased by the Taliban, and to freeze bank accounts and property owned or controlled by the Taliban.

In a letter last month to the sanctions committee, which held its first meeting on Friday, the Taliban ministry of civil aviation and tourism requested an exemption for "the operation of Ariana Afghan Airlines for the benefit of the public travellers and ordinary people of Afghanistan."

It said Afghanistan was a landlocked country heavily dependent on air transportation, including for the import of humanitarian supplies and to fly pilgrims on the annual pilgrimage to Makkah.

This request for a blanket exemption from sanctions was rejected, the committee source said.

But a separate request for permission for the airline to fly 12,000 Afghan pilgrims from Kabul and Kandahar to Saudi Arabia and back was being considered sympathetically, the source said.

The operation would be in two phases with 90 round-trip flights in each phase. The UN sanctions resolution provides for exemptions on a case-by-case basis for humanitarian and religious purposes.

The Taliban said the financial expenses of the proposed pilgrimage flights would be paid from unfrozen funds available inside Afghanistan.-Reuters