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Taliban pressing G20 to hurry in providing its promised $1.2 bln in aid to Afghanistan

Spokesman Muhammad Suhail Shaheen stressed that the government is ready to cooperate through the relevant agencies and other NGOs

TEHRAN, October 29. /TASS/. The radical Taliban movement (outlawed in Russia), which seized power in Afghanistan last August, has addressed the international community urging it to immediately provide $1.2 billion in material aid, promised at the G20 virtual summit that focused on the crisis in Afghanistan, the Taliban's spokesman Muhammad Suhail Shaheen tweeted on Friday. Earlier, the Taliban nominated him for the position of Afghanistan's ambassador to the UN.

"Winter is around the corner, so immediate need for the International Community to disburse on urgent basis the recently announced nearly one-billion-euro (some $1.2-billion) aid package pledged at a virtual G20 summit for Afghanistan, to all poor, vulnerable, and displaced people," Shaheen wrote. He stressed that "the IEA (the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the name the Taliban use for Afghanistan - TASS) Government is ready to fully cooperate through the channelled agencies and other NGOs on the ground."

Shaheen said the Taliban is calling on "the International Community to support Afghanistan with unfreezing nearly $10 billion assets of the Afghan people and resuming the development aid and projects pledged to Afghanistan by the International Community at the Geneva Conference 2020".

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