UNITED NATIONS: A United Nations committee Wednesday put off action on requests by the Taliban government in Afghanistan and Myanmar’s military regime to take their countries’ seats at the United Nations (UN)
“I can confirm the Credentials Committee had its meeting to consider credentials of U.N. member states, including Afghanistan and Myanmar,” Swedish U.N. Ambassador Anna Karin Enstrom, who heads the nine-member committee, told reporters following members’ closed-door discussions.
“The committee has decided to defer its decision of the credentials in these two situations,” she said.
But Ambassador Enestrom declined to say whether the current ambassadors of these two countries, appointed under governments that are no longer in power, will remain in their positions.
The Credentials Committee is composed of the Bahamas, Bhutan, Chile, China, Namibia, Russia, Sierra Leone, Sweden and the United States. The committee’s decisions are normally reached by consensus.
The Taliban had challenged the credentials of Ambassador Ghulam Isaczai, an appointee of the former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s government which they ousted on Aug. 15, and sought to replace him with a new U.N. permanent representative, Mohammad Suhail Shaheen, the new government’s spokesman.
Myanmar’s military junta, which seized power in a coup on February 1, wants to replace the envoy of the elected government with one of its own.
Wednesday’s decision by the Credential Committee means that, for now, the two ruling authorities will not get to name their own envoys to the UN.
