KABUL – Afghanistan's Taliban spokesperson Suhail Shaheen said the Taliban had condemned the string of astonishing terrorist attacks on the United States almost 2 decades ago as no ‘Afghans were involved' in them.
Recalling the past events in a prime time show on a Pakistani private news channel, he said “we condemned the incident, Abdul Salam Zaeef was the ambassador to Pakistan and I was an aide. We called a press conference and we condemned the attacks and had announced to unearth the facts behind the scenes”.
Commenting on the aftermath of the US invasion in Afghanistan, he said “we asked that the matter be resolved through dialogue, and the result of an invasion is before you now”.
He went on to say that “It won't be a good result for you, so it is better for you and for us also, having fought against an invasion [for so long] and many people being martyred, so we do not want this”.
“Nobody listened to us at that time and invaded Afghanistan and occupied it through sophisticated weapons”, he said.
Responding to a query, Shaheen said “Al Qaeda at the time had not informed Taliban or Mullah Muhammad Omar over such a move, and that the Taliban, who were in power at the time, got surprised over the attacks”.
Adding that “Following the recent takeover Taliban have made a policy to never allow the use of Afghan soil against any other country. We have made a policy and will also make a law besides monitoring such groups. Our security forces, our intelligence forces will be more active, he said.
He also negated the presence of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan saying “we are fully aware which countries came with such reports. It is countries and circles against us that provide information — baseless claims — to them, on the basis of which they make their reports. And we have rejected these several times. The reports do not reflect the ground reality”, he opined.
He also reiterated that the Taliban spokesman said that the group had pledged that they will not allow any such fund-raising centre, training centre or recruitment centre to function and asked countries to indicate where they may have found such places to exist.