China has called for economic sanctions on Afghanistan to be lifted and the Taliban to be given access to billions of dollars in frozen foreign exchange reserves, highlighting a deepening rift between Beijing and the west over the future of the country.
“Afghanistan’s foreign exchange reserves are national assets. They belong to the people and should be used for the people,” China’s foreign ministry said in a statement, citing remarks made by Wang Yi, the country’s foreign minister, at a virtual meeting of the G20 on Afghanistan. “They must not be used as a bargaining chip to force political pressure on Afghanistan.”
Multilateral financial institutions, including the World Bank and the IMF, should normalise lending to the country, Wang added, to alleviate the “suffering of the Afghan people” and “unilateral” sanctions should be lifted.