Afghanistan Times
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Kabul: The Wall Street Journal has reported, citing American officials, that after Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al-Qaeda, was killed in Kabul, the Biden administration has decided not to release the seized assets of the Central Bank of Afghanistan and has also stopped negotiations with the Taliban.
“Tom West”, the US special representative for Afghanistan, told the Wall Street Journal “We are not confident that the Central Bank of Afghanistan has the capacity to protect and monitoring mechanism for responsible asset management.”
He added: Needless to say, the Taliban’s sheltering of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al-Qaeda, reinforces our deep concern about the diversion of financial resources to terrorist groups.
This newspaper quoted White House officials and wrote that the Biden administration is consulting with the officials of other foreign countries about the creation of an international trust fund so that half of the seized assets can be used for the benefit of the Afghan people.
He added that progress had been made to establish this fund, but the Taliban’s violation of the Doha Agreement made it clear that they should be dealt with with “open eyes”.
According to this report, the United States has also stopped the talks with the Taliban about the release of foreign exchange resources.
The Wall Street Journal has written that this new decision of the US government halts the recent progress to release Afghanistan’s foreign exchange reserves and destroys the hope for economic reconstruction in this country.
