Egypt to Dissuade Taliban from Demolishing Buddhist StatuesEgyptian President Hosni Mubarak will send a high-ranking envoy to Afghanistan to persuade the Taliban regime to stop demolishing ancient Buddhist statues, Foreign Minister Amr Moussa said on Thursday.Mubarak will send "a high-level emissary" to Afghanistan to meet the Taliban leaders in the coming days, Moussa said, without giving the name of the diplomat and date of the trip, the Middle East News Agency reported. The move comes after Matsuura Koichiro, director-general of United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), called Mubarak Wednesday, asking him to intervene to salvage the pre-Islamic statues. During the phone conversation, Mubarak promised that he "would ask the appropriate authorities to establish contact with the Taliban to end this affair." Egypt, a contributor to the preservation of the cultural heritage in the world, has made efforts to protect a great collection of pre-Islamic monuments in the country, such as those of the pharaohs, Greco-Romans and Coptic Christians. Koichiro expressed the hope that Egypt, a key Sunni Muslim nation in the Arab and Muslim world, could play a big role in helping prevent the Taliban who are also Sunni from destroying the statues. The Taliban, a fundamentalist Islamic militia, have vowed to destroy all Buddhist monuments in the country, including two massive ancient Buddhas in Bamiyan in central Afghanistan, towering 50 meters and 34.5 meters respectively and carved into sandstone cliffs. They have already smashed major statue collections in several parts of the country since last week when the reclusive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar issued a decree to destroy what he termed "un-Islamic idols." Sources in Kabul said that Afghan Islamic clerics have urged the ruling Taliban's supreme leader not to bow to international pressure and to push ahead with the controversial plan to destroy the historic statues. The Taliban now control about 95 percent of Afghanistan. |
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