ABU DHABI: Former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani said Wednesday he supports talks between the Taliban and top former officials, and denied allegations that he transferred large sums of money out of the country before fleeing to the United Arab Emirates.
Ghani — making his first appearance since leaving Kabul on Sunday as the Taliban encircled the capital, a departure that ultimately resulted in their full takeover — reiterated that he had left in order to spare the country more bloodshed.
He said in the recorded video message, broadcast on his Facebook page, that he had no intention of remaining in exile in the Gulf nation and was “in talks” to return home.
He also said he was making efforts to “safeguard the rule of Afghans over our country,” without offering details.
“For now, I am in the Emirates so that bloodshed and chaos is stopped,” Ghani said from the UAE, which confirmed Wednesday he was being hosted there on “humanitarian grounds.”
He voiced support for talks held Wednesday between senior members of the Taliban movement, Ghani’s predecessor Hamid Karzai, and Abdullah Abdullah, who headed the ultimately failed peace process.
“I want the success of this process,” he said.
It was Abdullah — a long-time rival of Ghani — who announced the president had left the country on Sunday, suggesting he would be judged harshly.
But Ghani insisted he had left for the good of the country, and not his own wellbeing.
“Do not believe whoever tells you that your president sold you out and fled for his own advantage and to save his own life,” he said. “These accusations are baseless... and I strongly reject them.”
“I was expelled from Afghanistan in such a way that I didn’t even get the chance to take my slippers off my feet and pull on my boots,” he added, noting that he had arrived in the Emirates “empty-handed.”
He claimed that the Taliban had entered Kabul despite an agreement not to do so.
“Had I stayed there, an elected president of Afghanistan would have been hanged again right before the Afghans’ own eyes,” he said.
The first time the Taliban seized Kabul, when they established their regime in 1996, they dragged former communist president Mohammed Najibullah from a United Nations office where he had been sheltering, and hanged him in a public street after torturing him.
Former Afghan leader Ashraf Ghani: I left Kabul to prevent bloodshed, did not take money
https://arab.news/4ms89
Former Afghan leader Ashraf Ghani: I left Kabul to prevent bloodshed, did not take money
- Ghani made his first appearance since leaving Kabul as the Taliban encircled the capital, a departure that ultimately resulted in their full takeover
- He reiterated that he had left in order to spare the country more bloodshed
UN chief Guterres warns ‘powerful forces’ undermining global ties
- Guterres paid tribute to Britain for its decisive role in the creation of the United Nations
- He said 2025 had been a “profoundly challenging year for international cooperation and the values of the UN“
LONDON: UN chief Antonio Guterres Saturday deplored a host of “powerful forces lining up to undermine global cooperation” in a London speech marking the 80th anniversary of the first UN General Assembly.
Guterres, whose term as secretary-general ends on December 31 this year, delivered the warning at the Methodist Central Hall in London, where representatives from 51 countries met on January 10, 1946, for the General Assembly’s first session.
They met in London because the UN headquarters in New York had not yet been built.
Guterres paid tribute to Britain for its decisive role in the creation of the United Nations and for continuing to champion it.
But he said 2025 had been a “profoundly challenging year for international cooperation and the values of the UN.”
“We see powerful forces lining up to undermine global cooperation,” he said, adding: “Despite these rough seas, we sail ahead.”
Guterres cited a new treaty on marine biological diversity as an example of continued progress.
The treaty establishes the first legal framework for the conservation and sustainable use of marine diversity in the two-thirds of oceans beyond national limits.
“These quiet victories of international cooperation — the wars prevented, the famine averted, the vital treaties secured — do not always make the headlines,” he said.
“Yet they are real. And they matter.”
