Curbs on Taliban: Britain has reservations

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON, DEC. 25. The U.N. resolution imposing sanctions against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan did not have the unreserved backing of Britain, though, in the end, it voted for it, The Guardian has reported, quoting an unnamed Security Council source.

It said Britain ``privately opposed'' the sanctions and British diplomats in New York ``worked up until the last minute to try to block them''. The Foreign Office here, without commenting directly on the veracity of the report, emphasised the fact that Britain voted for the resolution and stood by the sanctions. ``Britain supports the sanctions and it is important that the Taliban hand over Osama bin Laden so that he face justice'', a Foreign Office official said.

The Guardian, meanwhile, said that Canada and the Netherlands also had reservations and quoted a diplomat as saying that ``if it (the resolution) had not been put on the table, we would not have dreamt it up.'' This is the second round of U.N. sanctions in a year and observers are sceptical if the latest resolution would be any more effective than the one last year which the Taliban Government ignored with contempt. They point to the futility of such ``rituals'' arguing that there was no way to enforce the sanctions. If anything, they had proved counter- productive as the Taliban had pulled out of the U.N. peace talks which were intended to bring the civil war to an end.

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Section  : International
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