US DIPLOMATIC PRESENCE "UNLIKELY"
The United States has evacuated nearly 5,500 American citizens from Afghanistan since Aug 14, including 50 in the last day, and was still working to get about 250 American citizens still in the country onto evacuation flights, a State Department spokesman said.
The Taliban had pledged to allow Afghans to leave Afghanistan after Tuesday's deadline for the withdrawal of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) troops, after which the United States was unlikely to have any diplomats in the country to help at-risk Afghans who miss out on the evacuation flights, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in an interview on NBC's Meet the Press programme.
"In terms of having an on-the-ground diplomatic presence on September 1st, that's not likely to happen," Blinken said.
Senator Ben Sasse, a Republican member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that the administration had failed to plan for a Taliban takeover, and criticised Blinken for giving an overly positive view of the evacuation effort.
"Their plan has basically been happy talk. People have died and people are going to die because President Biden decided to rely on happy talk instead of reality," Sasse told ABC's This Week.
Other members of Congress have vowed to probe what went awry in Afghanistan.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez, a Democrat, said earlier this month that his panel will hold a hearing on US policy towards Afghanistan "including the Trump administration’s flawed negotiations with (the) Taliban, and the Biden administration's flawed execution of the US withdrawal".
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiaGh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmNoYW5uZWxuZXdzYXNpYS5jb20vd29ybGQvYmlkZW4tdHJhdmVscy1haXItYmFzZS1ob25vdXItdXMtdHJvb3BzLWtpbGxlZC1hZmdoYW5pc3Rhbi0yMTQzMjk20gEA?oc=5
2021-08-29 15:39:10Z
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