- Restrain Taliban, PM urges world
leaders
- The Times of India News Service
NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Vajpayee has
written to various world leaders, urging them to raise the collective voice of humanity to
stop the senseless destruction of Buddhist statues in Afghanistan ordered by the Taliban.
Significantly, the Prime Minister said in
his letter that countries which have influence with the Taliban should be asked to reason
with the hardline Kabul leadership to withdraw the decree.
It is well known that Pakistan is a close
ally of the Taliban, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are the other two countries
which recognise the Taliban as the legitimate rulers of Afghanistan. The PM has cleverly
tried to get Pakistan involved and put the pressure on Islamabad to do something.
Vajpayee dashed off letters to members of
the five permanent members of the UN Security Council - US President George Bush,
Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair, French President Jacques Chirac, Chinese President
Jiang Zemin, and Russia's President Vladimir Putin. He has also written to leaders of
Buddhist nations like Japan, South Korea, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Sri Lanka, Bhutan,
Myanmar as well as UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
The Prime Minister said the decree
``represents a further obscurantist regression - an assault on centuries of Afghan
tradition and upon an irreplaceable civilisational inheritance of all mankind. We are
disturbed to see reports that the demolition is already in progress.''