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Taliban visits to the United States (last updated June 2004)
Representatives of the Taliban did visit the United States at least twice during the Clinton administration and at least once during the Bush administration. The United States took pains each time to reiterate that the visits did not indicate any recognition of the Taliban government and raised concern over issues such as the Taliban's human-rights record and its harboring of Osama Bin Laden.
Fahrenheit 9/11 imputes some kind of bad motive onto George W. Bush because of the Taliban's visits, especially the one visit that the Taliban's representatives made to Texas when Bush was governor. However, it does not appear that Bush had anything to do with any of the Taliban's first two visits to the United States or that the Bush administration treated the Taliban much differently from the Clinton administration.
Visits during the Clinton Administration
The visits during the Clinton administration occurred in the wake of Taliban forces taking control of Kabul in September 1996. The Taliban's victory changed the political dynamic in a way that caused confusion in the Clinton administration. A State Department spokesman initially hailed the possible stability but another backed away days later from the Taliban.
In February 1997, Taliban representatives met with the Clinton administration to discuss possible recognition. According to reports, they also met with representatives of Unocal, the oil and natural-gas company that was at the time seeking to develop a pipeline that would run from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan.
In December 1997, Taliban representatives again visited the United States and met with Unocal representatives. According to a report by Caroline Lees of the Telegraph, the Taliban representatives visited the Houston zoo, NASA space center, a Super Target store, and the home of a Unocal vice-president. There is no indication that George W. Bush, who was governor of Texas at the time, had any involvement in this visit.
Unocal later described its meetings with the Taliban as efforts "to educate them about the benefits such a pipeline could bring" to the "desperately poor and war-torn country." Unocal ended its involvement in the pipeline project in 1998 after the United States launched missile attacks in Afghanistan and condemned the Taliban.
Visits during the Bush Administration
The Bush administration did meet with Said Ramatullah Hashemi from the Taliban Foreign Ministry on March 19, 2001. Richard Boucher described the meeting as follows (transcript on-line here):
| "Mr. Ramatullah met today with working level officials at the State Department. He met with the Director of the Pakistan-Afghanistan-Bangladesh desk, and the actual Afghanistan desk officer for the Office of Counter-Terrorism. He presented a letter addressed to President Bush calling for improved relations and continued dialogue, but it did not contain any specific proposals for addressing the international concerns about terrorism and other issues with Afghanistan -- with Taliban.
"We meet with Taliban officials to discuss issues involving Afghanistan that are of great concern to the United States, including terrorism, narcotics, the peace process, humanitarian assistance and human rights. During these meetings, we inform the Taliban precisely where we stand and what they have to do to meet our concerns.
"We have stressed in particular to Mr. Ramatullah the importance of Taliban's compliance with UN Security Council Resolution 1333 and to the international community's concerns, including handing over indicted terrorist Usama bin Laden to a country where he can be brought to justice, and closing the terrorist camps.
"The meetings, I should add, don't imply any recognition of the Taliban. We don't recognize any government in Afghanistan." |
Sources: Unocal press releases and statements, on-line here. Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil & Fundamentalism in Central Asia (Yale University Press, 2001). Caroline Lees, "Oil barons court Taliban in Texas," Sunday Telegraph, December 14, 1997.
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