Kabul: A diplomatic row erupted on Wednesday between Afghanistan and key aid partners after Kabul declared "persona non grata" a Briton and an Irishman working for the EU and the UN, accusing them of threatening state security by meeting Taliban insurgents.
With Afghan President Hamid Karzai away in Pakistan, a government official said acting European Union mission head Michael Semple and senior United Nations official Marvin Patterson had been expelled and must leave by Thursday.
"It is the government's last decision. They are persona non grata," the official said on condition of anonymity. Western diplomats in Kabul closed ranks and insisted the row was merely a "misunderstanding," adding they hoped the pair would only have to leave for a short period.
Semple said that it would "not be appropriate" for him to comment on the matter at this time.
The government accused the pair, both old Afghan hands and experts in local languages and customs, of meeting Taliban members in the southern province of Helmand, heartland of Afghanistan's drug-producing poppy industry and an insurgency stronghold.
"Not only did they hold talks with the Taliban, but also had given them money," the Afghan official said. "It is not clear whether they were supporting the insurgency or not."
He said it was also unknown if the meeting was a personal initiative or if they were acting in an official capacity, but 50 Afghans - some of them colleagues of the pair - have been detained and investigated over their links to the matter.
The Afghan official said the meeting took place in Helmand's Mousa Qala district, controversially abandoned earlier this year by British troops after a deal was struck with local elders to police themselves.
TALIBAN
UK spies in secret talks
British spies organised secret meetings with senior Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan over the summer, a newspaper reported yesterday.
Officers from Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, better known as MI6, have engaged in peace talks with up to a dozen Taliban officials, according to The Daily Telegraph, which cited an intelligence source, AP reported.
"The SIS officers were understood to have sought peace directly with the Taliban, with some of them coming across as some sort of armed militia," the paper quoted the source as saying.
Although Britain and its Nato allies are currently engaged in a fierce campaign to root out resurgent Taliban militants from Afghanistan's south, both British and Afghan officials have voiced interest in trying to talk the Taliban into laying down their arms.
