Rome, Oct. 12 (BNA) Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi will host a special summit of the Group of Twenty major economies on Tuesday to discuss the situation in Afghanistan, where fears of a looming humanitarian catastrophe are growing following the Taliban’s return to power.
Since the Taliban took over Afghanistan on August 15, the country – already reeling from drought and extreme poverty after decades of war – has seen its economy nearly collapse, raising the specter of a mass refugee exodus, Reuters reported.
The video conference, scheduled to begin at 1 pm (1100 GMT), will focus on aid needs, concerns about security and ways to ensure safe passage abroad for the thousands of Western-allied Afghans still in the country.
“Humanitarian support is urgently needed for the most vulnerable, especially women and children, as winter approaches,” said an official familiar with the G20 agenda.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is due to join the summit, underlining the central role given to the UN in addressing the crisis – in part because many countries do not want direct relations with the Taliban.
Italy, which holds the rotating G-20 presidency, has worked hard to hold the meeting in the face of very different views within the disparate group on how to deal with Afghanistan after the chaotic US withdrawal from Kabul.
“The main problem is that Western countries want to put their finger on the way the Taliban run the country, how they treat women for example, while China and Russia on the other hand have a non-interference foreign policy,” said a diplomatic source. close to the topic.
China has publicly demanded the lifting of economic sanctions on Afghanistan, the unfreezing of billions of dollars in international Afghan assets and their return to Kabul. It was not clear if that would be discussed on Tuesday.
While US President Joe Biden, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and European G20 leaders were expected to attend the meeting, Chinese media reported that President Xi Jinping would not. It was also not clear if Russian President Vladimir Putin would call.
A diplomatic source said Afghanistan’s neighbors Pakistan and Iran were not invited to the phone call, but Qatar, which has played a key role as an interlocutor between the Taliban and the West, will join the discussions.
The virtual summit comes just days after top US and Taliban officials met in Qatar for their first face-to-face meeting since the militant group regained power. Read more
Tuesday’s meeting comes less than three weeks before the official G20 summit in Rome on October 30-31, which is set to focus on climate change, global economic recovery, tackling malnutrition and the COVID-19 pandemic.