DOHA
\nA Taliban delegation arrived in Qatar on Wednesday for talks with the United States on unlocking some of Afghanistan\u2019s reserves following a devastating earthquake, with Washington seeking ways to ensure the money goes to help the population.
\nThe White House said it is working \u201curgently\u201d on the effort, but a member of the Afghan central bank\u2019s board said it could take time to finalise.
\nThe Taliban\u2019s foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, arrived in the Qatari capital Doha along with finance ministry and central bank officials for talks with the US envoy on Afghanistan, Tom West, Taliban foreign ministry spokesman Hafiz Zia Ahmed said, posting a tarmac picture on Twitter.
\nAfter the Taliban takeover in August 2021, Washington froze $7 billion in reserves and the international community halted billions in direct aid that Afghanistan and its population of roughly 40 million people had relied on.
\nThe currency has collapsed and the country descended into a serious economic crisis, although some assistance has been restored. Last week\u2019s 5.9-magnitude earthquake in eastern Afghanistan, which killed more than 1,000 people and left tens of thousands homeless, adds urgency to the funding debate.
\n\u201cNegotiations are underway and it is our expectation that a final proposal under discussion will be finalised,\u201d said Shah Mehrabi, member of the Supreme Council of the Central Bank of Afghanistan.
\nHowever, details on \u201cthe mechanism to transfer the reserves to the Central Bank has not been finalised,\u201d he told AFP.
\n\u201cIt is going to take a while. These things do not happen overnight.\u201d
\nThe State Department did not immediately confirm the Doha talks, but White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said over the weekend that there were efforts \u201cto get these funds moving\u201d from the frozen reserves.
\n\u201cWe are urgently working to address complicated questions about the use of these funds to ensure they benefit the people of Afghanistan and not the Taliban,\u201d she told reporters travelling with President Joe Biden to Europe.
\nIn question are $3.5 billion in frozen reserves, half the total blocked by the US government.
\n\u201cI have argued that these reserves should be released to the Central Bank,\u201d said Mehrabi, who also is an economics professor at Montgomery College in the suburbs of the US capital.
\nHe proposed a \u201climited, monitored release of reserves\u201d of about $150 million each month to pay for imports.
\nThat would help \u201cstabilise prices and help meet the needs of ordinary Afghans so that they can afford to buy bread, cooking oil, sugar and fuel,\u201d alleviating the misery of families facing high inflation, he said.
\nUse of the funds \u201ccan be independently monitored and audited by external auditing firms with an option to terminate in the event of misuse,\u201d he said.
\nThe United Nations has warned that half the country is threatened with food shortages.
\nThe United States earlier said it was contributing nearly $55 million to relief efforts made more urgent by the earthquake, directing aid to groups working in Afghanistan.
\nThe Taliban are still considered a terrorist group by the United States, which has insisted that any improvement of relations would be dependent on meeting key concerns, including on the treatment of women.
\nBiden in February gave the green light for the other half of the frozen reserves to go to compensating survivors and families of the victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks, which triggered the invasion in which the United States toppled the Taliban and kept afloat a pro-Western government for two decades.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DOHA A Taliban delegation arrived in Qatar on Wednesday for talks with the United States on unlocking some of Afghanistan\u2019s reserves following a devastating earthquake, with Washington seeking ways to ensure the money goes to help the population. The White House said it is working \u201curgently\u201d on the effort, but a member of the Afghan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269184,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[9229,3777,9230,192],"class_list":{"0":"post-269174","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-afghan-funds","9":"tag-earthquake","10":"tag-frozen","11":"tag-taliban"},"yoast_head":"\n