Global Policy Forum

Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar on Thursday warned of serious action against any UN move to station its teams to monitor an arms embargo against the Taliban. "In case someone is appointed as controller on the Afghan borders, the Islamic Emirate would look at it as an aggression and treat them like enemies on the frontline," Omar said in a statement broadcast by the state-run Radio Shariat.

The UN Security Council members on Tuesday expressed support for creation of a permanent mechanism to monitor an arms embargo against the Taliban. "The United States agrees with this recommendation and would support a resolution to establish such a mechanism," Cameron Hume, a US representative on the Security Council, said during an open debate on Afghanistan.

Diplomats say the United States and Russia could submit a resolution on increased monitoring of the embargo within two weeks. Warning that the Taliban would take "serious action" against any such mechanism, Omar said "the freedom of Afghanistan and the dignity of Jihad is the greatest honour of Afghans".

He said "the international infidelity has threatened our national dignity several times, sometimes they invade our country, sometimes they fire cruise missiles on us and sometimes impose tyrannical sanctions against us". He slammed the UN sanctions as an attempt to "suppress Muslims and Islam".

Earlier the Afghan foreign minister urged the United Nations to review sanctions, the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press reported. "The UN must reconsider the unilateral sanctions imposed against the Taliban regime," Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Mutawakel said in a letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

The UN in January imposed a second round of sanctions against the Taliban over its refusal to extradite wealthy Osama bin Laden. The sanctions include aviation and diplomatic restrictions, as well as an arms embargo against the Taliban, but not against opposition forces loyal to the ousted government of president Burhanuddin Rabbani, who still holds the country's UN seat.

Mutawakel said sanctions have increased the "miseries of the Afghan people who were already suffering because of 20 years of war and the worst drought" in the country's recent history. He claimed that UN teams sent recently to assess the implementation of the sanctions had found "no proof" that foreign weapons were being supplied to the Taliban. But they had seen Russian-made weapons seized from opposition forces, he said. "Under the present circumstances we urge the UN to review the sanctions against the Taliban," the foreign minister wrote.

In a report published on May 25, UN experts noted that the air and arms embargo against Afghanistan cannot be enforced without the cooperation of Afghanistan's six neighbours, particularly Pakistan.