ISLAMABAD - Afghanistan's ruling Taliban said on Friday that diplomats from Germany, the United States and Australia had the right to visit eight foreign aid workers detained in Kabul on charges they promoted Christianity.
Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Taliban's ambassador to neighbouring Pakistan and just returned from meeting Taliban leaders in Afghanistan, said the movement was cooperating with international requests for access to the detained foreigners.
"Of course we are cooperating with them. We would convey their message back to our authorities in Kabul and of course it is their right to go there and to see them, their nationals," Zaeef told a news conference after meeting top diplomats from the three countries.
"I have promised them visas but I have set no time," he added.
Twenty-four workers from the German-based Shelter Now International (SNI) -- four Germans, two Australians and two Americans and 16 Afghans -- were arrested on August 5 on charges of trying to convert Afghan Muslims to Christianity.
Taliban officials at the embassy in Pakistan say they are waiting for word from Kabul for the visas.
A top diplomat at the Australian High Commission in Islamabad said the morning meeting with Zaeef ended inconclusively.
"(But) as soon as the visas are issued the (three-nation) mission will leave immediately, by road if necessary but hopefully by air," he said.
Travel options include a scheduled United Nations flight on Sunday, a possible special flight on Saturday, or a 10-hour drive to Kabul. Afghanistan, under U.N. Security Council sanctions, has no commercial international flights.
The Taliban deputy ambassador in Islamabad, Sohail Shaheen, has said the earliest the visas could be issued was Saturday.
DEATH AWAITS?
Aid workers in Kabul say while the foreign detainees can expect help, they are more concerned about the fate of the local staff.
"The German diplomat who is set to travel to Kabul will also make an effort on behalf of the detained Afghans," said a diplomatic source in Berlin.
Under international laws the diplomats will only be entitled to have consular access to their own nationals, he added.
The detained Afghans could face the death penalty for either deserting Islam for Christianity or trying to convert Muslim Afghans, but a U.S. official has said the foreigners, under a decree approved in June, may just be deported.
Zaeef said punishment would be determined by Islamic Sharia law and offered a ray of hope for the foreign detainees.
"All decisions are taken according to the prevailing laws of Sharia -- whether there is punishment for them, what kind of punishment, or whether they are released; all would be based on Sharia," he said.
"Punishment would be different for Muslims and for non-Muslims. There is a difference," he added.
But in Kabul and other major cities in Afghanistan Muslim clerics in their Friday prayer sermons demanded exemplary punishment for foreign Christian missionaries, Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) reported.
"Islam is a complete code of life and those who are trying to divert people from it... are doing nothing but creating mischief and conflict," AIP quoted Supreme Court Chief Justice Mualana Noor Muhammad Saqib as saying in his weekly sermon to the largest congregation for Friday prayers in Kabul.
"These people should be given an exemplary punishment so that it becomes a lesson for the others and completely ends religious preaching of this kind," he added.
Saqib was expressing personal opinions and the Taliban say their supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar has the final word.
The Taliban has been internationally condemned for a poor human rights record -- particularly against women -- and for destroying priceless its pre-Islamic heritage including giant ancient Buddhas hewn out of cliffs in central Bamiyan province.
EVIDENCE MOUNTS
Diplomats said there was no fresh information about the detainees, who are believed to have been denied any contact with people outside the detention centre in Kabul.
The Taliban movement said on Thursday it had gathered more evidence to prove that the 24 SNI staff were trying to convert Afghan Muslims to Christianity.
The Taliban religious police say they have seized around 10,000 audio and video cassettes, most in the local Dari and Pushto languages.
Shelter Now has denied its staff were proselytising, and said other staff in Kabul and Herat had fled to Pakistan.
Mohammad Salim Haqqani, the Taliban Deputy Minister for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, said on Thursday investigators had yet to determine whether those accused of proselytising had made any Christian converts.
09:03 08-10-01
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