ISLAMABAD - Western diplomats and relatives received visas to fly to Afghanistan on Monday after the ruling Taliban lifted its ban on access to eight foreign aid workers held for three weeks on charges of spreading Christianity.
The diplomats, from Germany, Australia and the United States, emerged from the Taliban embassy with their visas and said they would leave for Kabul aboard a U.N. flight at 4 p.m. (1100 GMT).
"We have got the visas," Helmut Landes, the spokesman for the embassy and the German diplomat who would travel to Kabul, told Reuters.
"We will be leaving for Kabul this afternoon and hope to meet the detainees this evening. Otherwise, tomorrow morning," he said.
A short time later the relatives of the two American detainees -- the mother of one and the father of the other -- emerged from the embassy.
The father said he was "ecstatic" and they expected to go to Kabul at the same time as the diplomats.
The flight comes a day after Afghan authorities let the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) meet the six women and two men who had not been seen by anyone except the Taliban since being jailed in early August.
The diplomats had returned from Kabul last Tuesday after a futile weeklong effort to see the aid workers, who were arrested after raids by religious police.
"Last time we had sent them under the condition they could not meet the detainees but this time there is no condition," Taliban ambassador to Pakistan Abdul Salam Zaeef told Reuters.
The eight members of the Christian aid group Shelter Now International -- six women and two men -- are four Germans, two Australians and two Americans.
In Kabul, the ICRC said it planned a meeting with Taliban officials on Monday to follow up on their visit to the jailed aid workers on Sunday and to pick up letters to their relatives.
"After the visit there is always a meeting with the authorities about what we saw but it is strictly confidential," spokesman Mario Musa told Reuters. "We will pick up messages for their relatives."
Musa said about 24 forms on which the ICRC receives messages from detained people it visits were left with the aid workers. He said ICRC message forms are open and are read by the authorities.
The ICRC, which maintains strict neutrality in any conflict, was silent on the condition of the aid workers, saying only that detainees were "happy" to see them.
Sixteen Afghan staff of Shelter Now International were also arrested by the Taliban but the ICRC has not been able to see them yet.
The Taliban say their supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar will decide what punishment will be meted out to the foreigners and local staff. Under their strict interpretation of Islam it could include death sentences.
The Taliban say they recovered Bibles, tapes and CDs about Christianity in the local Dari and Pashto languages that were being used to convert Muslims to Christianity.
The Taliban later said they had widened the investigation into alleged links with other groups, including the U.N. World Food Programme.
The arrests followed months of worsening ties between the Taliban and the numerous foreign aid groups helping impoverished Afghans cope with more than two decades of war and now a devastating drought.
The Taliban, saying their investigation into alleged proselytising was nearing completion, had said on Saturday they would now allow visits by the ICRC, relatives and representatives of the prisoners' governments.
The ICRC said after the visit by its delegation, which included a nurse and two doctors, that all eight were held in the same detention centre, with the women in one room and the
04:46 08-27-01
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