NEW YORK, Aug 12 (APP):The United States is trying to secure assurances from the Taliban that they will not attack the American Embassy in Kabul if the group takes the capital, The New York Times reported Thursday.
The effort, led by Zalmay Khalilzad, the chief American envoy in talks with the Taliban, seeks to stave off an evacuation of the embassy as the fighters rapidly seize cities across Afghanistan, the newspaper said, citing two American officials.
The Taliban’s advance has put foreign embassies in Kabul on high alert for a surge of violence in coming months, or even weeks, and forced consulates and other diplomatic missions elsewhere in the country to shut down.
The report comes as the US embassy in Kabul is urging Americans, who were not working for the U.S. government, to leave Afghanistan immediately on commercial flights.
Meanwhile, American diplomats now are trying to determine how soon they may need to evacuate the U.S. Embassy should the Taliban prove to be more bent on fighting than a détente, the report said.
Biden administration officials insist that there are no immediate plans to significantly draw down the embassy’s staff of 4,000 employees, including about 1,400 Americans.
“We are withdrawing our forces from Afghanistan, but we are not withdrawing from Afghanistan,” the State Department said in a statement. “Although U.S. troops will depart, the United States will maintain our robust diplomatic engagement with Afghanistan.”
Five current and former officials, according to the Times, described the mood inside the embassy as increasingly tense and worried, and diplomats at the State Department’s headquarters in Washington noted a sense of tangible depression at the specter of closing it, nearly 20 years after U.S. Marines reclaimed the burned-out building in December 2001.
At United Nations Headquarters in New York, a UN Spokesman said that Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was following “with deep concern” the situation in Afghanistan, including the latest fighting in Herat and Kandahar.
“We’re particularly concerned about the shift of fighting to urban areas, with the potential for civilian harm even greater,” Spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters at the regular noon briefing on Thursday.
“We hope that the discussion this week in Doha between representatives of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and the Taliban, along with regional and international envoys will restore the pathway to a negotiated settlement to the conflict,” the spokesman said.
“The United Nations stands ready to contribute to such a settlement and remains focused on providing assistance to the increasing number of Afghans in need.”
But, he said, the security environment was “highly complex and clearly challenging.”
The United Nations, he said, was doing everything to ensure the safety, protection of it’s staff– there are 300 internationals and 3,400 locals across Afghanistan serving the Afghan people, but there were no plans for downsizing the mission.