Envoy travels to Doha for talks with Taliban on securing safe passage out of Afghanistan for remaining British nationals and allies.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s special representative for Afghan transition, Simon Gass, flew to Doha, Qatar, to meet Taliban representatives, according to a government statement late on Tuesday.
Much of the Taliban’s senior leadership lived in exile in the Qatari capital until the overthrow of Afghanistan’s Western-backed government after 20 years of war.
Gass “is meeting with senior Taliban representatives to underline the importance of safe passage out of Afghanistan for British nationals, and those Afghans who have worked with us over the past twenty years,” the statement said.
It is the first publicly disclosed statement about diplomacy between London and the Taliban since UK joined the United States in the mammoth airlift of more than 100,000 people out of the country after the Afghan military’s capitulation.