US Urges Taliban to Allow Free Passage of Afghans

Washington — 

Amid concerns over new Taliban travel restrictions and a halt in evacuation flights from Afghanistan, U.S. officials are urging the group to honor their commitment to provide safe passage for Afghans seeking to leave the country.

Following their takeover of Afghanistan in August, the Taliban pledged to let all people with proper travel documentation leave, acquiescing to international demands for their unrestricted departure.

A State Department spokesperson said Wednesday that officials had raised concerns over the restrictions with the Taliban.

“Our ability to facilitate relocation for our Afghan allies also depends on the Taliban living up to its commitment of free passage,” the spokesperson said in response to a query from VOA. “We have reiterated this point to them.”

Writing on Twitter, Ian McCary, the U.S. chargé d’affaires to Afghanistan, said Wednesday that “all people with valid travel documents should be able to depart the country.”

The comments came after top Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said at a press conference over the weekend that authorities in Afghanistan would stop Afghans from trying to leave the country without an “excuse.”

“I have to say clearly that persons who leave the country along with their families have no excuse … we are preventing them,” Mujahid said.

Hugo Shorter, the British chargé d’affaires, called on the Taliban to clarify the remarks. “Such actions undermine both commitments to the international community and the trust of Afghans,” he tweeted.

Amid the uproar, Mujahid on Tuesday appeared to walk back his comment.

“My remarks about Afghans going abroad was only Afghans who do not have legal documents and are going abroad illegally will be prevented,” he tweeted. “Our compatriots who have legal documents and invitations can travel outside the country and can return to the country.”

Asked by VOA about a separate reported Taliban directive to officials at Afghan ports of entry to stop anyone who has worked with U.S. and NATO forces, Mujahid said, “This report may not be correct.”

The directive was obtained and published by the Afghan news site 8am.af.

Despite Mujahid’s reassurances, the Taliban’s policy on travel remains unclear, leaving in limbo tens of thousands of Afghans who are seeking to evacuate. According to Matt Zeller, a U.S. Army veteran and co-founder of the nonprofit No One Left Behind, more than 250,000 Afghan allies eligible for special immigrant visas and U.S. refugee status remain in Afghanistan.

Since August, when the U.S. military led the evacuation of more than 124,000 people following the Taliban takeover of the capital, Kabul, the State Department and private organizations have chartered aircraft to airlift some of those left behind.

About 10,000 Afghans have gotten out over the past six months, according to Alex Plitsas, chief operating officer and spokesperson for Human First Coalition, a humanitarian organization. He estimates that private groups have spent roughly $100 million on the evacuation process.

But an apparent row between the Taliban and Qatari officials has brought the evacuation flights to a halt in recent weeks, according to several people familiar with the process.

The last State Department-chartered flight from Kabul to Doha was on January 26, and “then it shut down again,” a U.S. government official familiar with the situation said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“The [State Department] pipeline is paralyzed, but that seems to have more to do with whatever is going on between the Taliban and Qatar,” the official said. “They are looking for other options in the region.”

The State Department spokesperson did not respond to a question about the date of the last official evacuation.

The spokesperson, however, said the department continues “to facilitate the safe and orderly travel of U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, and Afghan allies and their eligible family members who wish to leave Afghanistan.”

“As we’ve said before, we will be relentless in this effort as we stand by our Afghan allies and their families,” the spokesperson said.

VOA State Department bureau chief Nike Ching and VOA Afghan Service’s Najiba Khalil contributed to this article.

US Urges Its Citizens to Consider Leaving Russia Immediately

WASHINGTON — 

U.S. citizens should consider leaving Russia immediately on commercial flights, the State Department said Sunday, citing an increasing number of airlines canceling flights and countries closing their airspace to Russia after its invasion of Ukraine.

“U.S. citizens should consider departing Russia immediately via commercial options still available,” said a security alert dated Feb. 27 on the website of the U.S. embassy in Moscow.

It has asked U.S. citizens to have “a contingency plan that does not rely on U.S. government assistance.”

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the biggest assault on a European state since World War Two, has unleashed a barrage of Western reprisals, with U.S. and European governments imposing sanctions on Russian banks and financial institutions.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has called the attack a “special operation” through which he aims to demilitarize Moscow’s southern neighbor.

The State Department has kept its travel advisory for Russia at “Level 4: Do Not Travel.” On Feb. 20, the U.S. embassy in Moscow had advised Americans in the country to have an evacuation plan, citing the threat of attacks in Moscow and along the Russian border with Ukraine.

Iran Supreme Leader Urges Nuclear Energy Progress Amid Talks

TEHRAN, Iran — 

Iran’s supreme leader vowed Thursday that his country would ramp up development of its civilian nuclear program, as major world powers continued delicate talks in Vienna to revive Tehran’s landmark nuclear deal.

In a televised speech, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei urged the importance of nuclear energy for Iran, while again asserting that it had no interest in nuclear weapons.

Khamenei’s remarks seemed clearly aimed at the countries involved in the Vienna talks.

“Enemies are making cruel moves against our nuclear energy issue, [putting] sanctions on nuclear energy that they know is peaceful,” he said. “They do not want Iran to achieve this great and significant progress.”

The accord, which former President Donald Trump abandoned nearly four years ago, granted Iran sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program.

Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Bagheri Kani, tweeted late Wednesday that the parties were “closer than ever” to an agreement.

But talks have repeatedly stalled in recent months as Iranian negotiators press hard-line demands, exasperating Western diplomats.

Khamenei, who so far has largely stayed silent on the negotiations, called claims that Iran was pursuing a bomb “nonsense,” saying they were meant to deprive Iran of its legitimate right to nuclear power.

“If we do not pursue [peaceful nuclear energy] today, tomorrow will be late,” he said.

Iran long has insisted its nuclear program is peaceful. But the country’s steps away from its obligations under the 2015 accord have alarmed its archenemy Israel and world powers.

Tehran has since started enriching uranium up to 60% purity — a short technical step from the 90% needed to make a bomb — and spinning far more advanced centrifuges than those permitted under the deal.

US Urges Ex-American Hostage in Iran to Halt Vienna Hunger Strike

WASHINGTON — 

The Biden administration is urging a 77-year-old former U.S. hostage in Iran to call off a hunger strike in Vienna aimed at pressing for a U.S.-Iranian deal to free Americans and other Westerners of Iranian origin detained in Iran.

Barry Rosen said in a Twitter video that he began the hunger strike Wednesday outside Vienna’s Palais Coburg hotel, the main venue for separate U.S.-Iran indirect talks about reviving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. The JCPOA is a 2015 deal in which Iran promised to constrain its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief from the U.S. and other world powers.

Rosen had arrived in Vienna Wednesday morning local time on a flight from New York. He was among 52 Americans taken hostage in Tehran by Islamists who seized the U.S. embassy in 1979, when the country’s Islamic Revolution overthrew a U.S.-backed monarchy.

Rosen started the hunger strike a day before the 41st anniversary of his and other American hostages’ release on Jan. 20, 1980. His protest aims to raise awareness about the plight of at least a dozen Iranians with dual nationalities, four of them Americans, who are detained in Iran or barred from leaving the country.

In an email sent to VOA on Wednesday, the U.S. State Department praised Rosen and the other U.S. embassy hostages as heroes and said it was moved by his commitment to the release of wrongfully detained Americans in Iran. U.S. Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley would meet with Rosen in Vienna, the email continued, and tell him he does not need to go on a hunger strike because the Biden administration shares that commitment.

“We strongly discourage him from doing so in the interest of his health,” a State Department spokesperson wrote.

Detainees in limbo

In the United States’ view, the American and other Western detainees of Iranian origin are hostages. Washington believes Iran has falsely accused them of security offenses so it can use them as bargaining chips to extract diplomatic concessions from the West. Iran insists any dual nationals whom it releases should be part of a prisoner swap, including for Iranians charged with or convicted of violating U.S. sanctions against Iran and other offenses.

“Special Envoy Malley speaks regularly with the families of [detained Americans] Emad Shargi, Siamak and Baquer Namazi, and Morad Tahbaz, who is also a U.K. citizen, and continues to pursue efforts to secure their release and reunite them with their families,” the State Department spokesperson said.

In a Tuesday interview with VOA Persian before departing for Vienna, Rosen said he would try to meet U.S. and Iranian officials in the Austrian capital to urge them to change their approach to indirect prisoner swap talks that began last April in tandem with the JCPOA talks. Mediators from European powers, Russia and China have been exchanging messages between the two sides.

For the United States, Rosen said a new approach would mean telling Iran to release the detainees before any agreement to revive the JCPOA was reached. “And [if] there is a [nuclear] deal, I want to make sure that Iran knows that if they take hostages again, whatever is negotiated is over completely,” he said.

Rosen said such an approach would honor President Joe Biden’s pledge to make the promotion of human rights a priority in American foreign policy.

In one of several Twitter videos posted Wednesday by Rosen, he said he met with Malley in Vienna for about an hour and had a “very good” talk, but the details were confidential. “I do think that there is a lot of support for the hostages who are being held in Iran. And I think we’ll know more as the days progress,” he said.

US decouples the goals

In its statement Wednesday to VOA, the U.S. State Department reiterated its opposition to making the release of the detainees a condition for a JCPOA deal.

“We have made it clear to the Iranians, and clear to the families, that seeking the release of our wrongfully detained citizens in Iran is a priority and that talks on their release should proceed regardless of what happens with respect to the JCPOA,” the State Department spokesperson said.

A spokesman for the government of former Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who left office in August, had said the previous month that Tehran was willing to exchange prisoners with the United States as a humanitarian gesture, provided that such a swap includes the release of Iranians detained in the U.S. and in unspecified other countries “at the behest of America.”

Barbara Slavin, an Iran analyst at the Washington-based Atlantic Council and an advocate of reviving the JCPOA, told VOA she sympathized with Rosen but did not believe the United States should condition a JCPOA deal on Iran releasing the Western dual nationals.

“The nuclear talks are difficult enough. Also, Iran should release these people whether the Vienna negotiations succeed or not,” she wrote in a Tuesday message.

In his VOA interview, Rosen said he also would try to press Iranian negotiators in Vienna to change their approach to a prisoner swap by urging them to return to Iran’s cultural tradition of being hospitable toward guests and visitors.

“Iranians know how important it is to think of the connectivity between them and other people in the world,” Rosen said. “This is a culture that is over 2,500 years old. But under this regime, Iran is acting as if it were a country of wild animals. Iranian leaders should be ashamed of themselves.”

Rosen said he had not heard from any Iranian officials about whether they would accept his request to meet with them.

The best way to persuade Iran to change course, Slavin said, is to show it hurts itself by scaring away dual nationals, who fear that if they visit the country, they will not be able to leave. “Iran will never reach anything close to its potential while it continues to alienate much of its diaspora and remains estranged from the U.S.,” she said.

This article originated in VOA’s Persian Service. Click here for the original Persian version of the story. VOA State Department Correspondent Nike Ching contributed to this report, in which some information came from Reuters