Qatar Foreign Minister Revealed Secret Meeting With Taliban Leader (Image: twitter.com/fawaziii)
Qatar Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani has recently tapped into a wide range of topics. He was speaking in an interview with CNN, held on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.
In it, the official disclosed details of a secret meeting with the Taliban’s top leader in Kandahar. He also reiterated that Qatar”s position towards Syria remains unchanged, and said the Gulf state does not “see anything that makes him eligible to come back to the Arab League”, reported the Doha News.
“We don’t want to break the consensus on the decision, because at the end of the day one vote won’t matter and we try to explain our position, the other Arab countries have a different perspective than us, so we didn’t want to object to that decision in the session itself”, he added.
The meeting covered multiple topics including regional wave of normalisation with Syria’s Bashar Al Assad regime, secret talks with the Taliban, and policies concerning the LGBTQ community.
As per the reports, Qatar stood as a key facilitator of dialogue between all the parties in Afghanistan, even after the Taliban captured the Afghan capital of Kabul on 15 August 2021.
Qatar is successfully maintaining its dialogue with the acting Afghan administration also. Qatar’s foreign minister held a crucial meeting with the Taliban’s supreme leader Haibatullah Akhunzada in Kandahar in June. The meeting has huge role in the latest repressive Taliban policies that have targeted women and girls.
“We’ve been very clear, if you want to be part of the international community, you need to cooperate with us. You need to work with us, together, in order to have your country as a Muslim modern country as Qatar”, said the Qatar foreign minister in the interview.
“Qatar is a Muslim country where women are allowed and proud, they are an active part of the community, they are very productive, they are leaders, ministers, ambassadors. They are, on all levels, in the work or schools, they are outnumbering the men in higher education even”, he added.
In reply to a question on LGBTQ+ community, the Foreign Minister said that, “I think that, first of all, this debate and argument is not happening in the so-called Global South only, it’s happening even in the West, happening in America, it’s happening elsewhere, it’s everywhere”.
“People of Qatar like “to preserve their tradition and they are very proud of their faith, and this is something not acceptable in our faith”, Sheikh Mohammed added.
