Afghanistan lashed out at the United States on Thursday, accusing it of using its hunt for terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden as an excuse for new sanctions against Kabul's Islamic rulers. The United States believes bin Laden is in Afghanistan and wants the country's Taliban rulers to hand him over for trial in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people. Osama is just an excuse of America which is really opposed to an Islamic system in Afghanistan. Arif was alluding to a new resolution being prepared at the United Nations calling for an arms embargo against Afghanistan's Taliban militia to pressure its leaders to close terrorist training camps, stop the flow of drugs and to surrender bin Laden. Arif included Russia, which invaded Afghanistan in December 1979 and fought there for a decade, in his condemnation.
New sanctions are cruel for the people.
They won't hurt the government. Fears of more sanctions have sent Afghanistan's beleaguered currency, the Afghani, plunging and food prices soaring, he said. The Afghani dropped to 70,000 to the U.S. dollar, down from 65,000 a week ago. Last year the United Nations imposed limited sanctions against the Taliban barring its airline from international flights, and froze Taliban bank accounts abroad to press the Taliban to hand over bin Laden, believed by the United States to run a global terrorist network from Afghanistan. The new proposed resolution would impose an arms embargo against only the Taliban, freeze the assets of bin Laden and his organization, direct the Taliban to close camps where terrorists are trained and restrict travel of senior Taliban officials except for humanitarian and religious purposes.