A Taliban delegation attended the UN-led meeting in Qatar on Afghanistan today, after organizers said that women will not be admitted to the demonstration, the Associated Press reported, quoted by BTA.
The two-day meeting starting today is the third of its kind, organized by the United Nations and dedicated to the Afghan crisis, taking place in the Qatari capital Doha.
Zabiullah Mujahid, the Taliban regime's chief spokesman, wrote in X that she met with representatives of various countries, including Russia, India and Uzbekistan, as part of the meeting. Mujahid heads the Taliban delegation in Qatar.
The Taliban were not invited to the first meeting in Doha, and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said they had set unacceptable conditions for participation in the second meeting in February, including demands that members of Afghan civil society be excluded from the talks and the Taliban to be treated as the rightful rulers of Afghanistan.
The Taliban seized power in August 2021 as US and NATO forces were in the final weeks of their withdrawal from Afghanistan after two decades of war. No country has officially recognized the Taliban as Afghanistan's government, and the UN has said recognition is nearly impossible as long as they continue to impose bans on women's education and employment.
The UN's chief representative in Afghanistan, Roza Otunbayeva, defended the fact that Afghan women were not included in the Doha meeting and stressed that demands for women's rights would certainly be raised at the Doha meeting.