UN removes five former Taliban members from sanctions list

The United Nations announced on Friday that it has removed five former senior members of the Taliban regime from its sanctions blacklist.

The UN Security Council Al-Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions Committee said it had approved the deletion of five entries from its so-called Consolidated List following a regular review.

The delisted persons included two Taliban officials who were marked as "reportedly deceased." The other three were Abdul Satar Paktin, a former foreign minister, Abdul Salam Zaeef, a former deputy mine minister and ambassador to Pakistan, and Abdul Hakim Mujahid Muhammad Awrang, who once served as Afghanistan's UN envoy.

The committee said that "assets freeze, travel ban and arms embargo" imposed on the individuals, as requested by UN Security Council Resolution 1904, will be no longer applicable.

The delisting move followed Afghan President Hamid Karzai's request for the Security Council to drop its sanctions against some Taliban members in an effort to push forward the country's embattled national reconciliation process.

Karzai reportedly had asked for more names to be removed from the sanctions list, which was first established by Security Council Resolution 1267 adopted in 1999 and later updated regularly.

Source: Xinhua