More detail on the Afghan statues.
March 2, 2001
Taliban Fire Mortars at Afghan
Buddha Statues
By REUTERS
Filed at 12:57 p.m. ET
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan's
ruling Taliban were reported on
Friday to have shelled renowned,
rock-hewn Buddhas as a torrent of
condemnation echoed around the
world at their plan to destroy all
the country's historic statues.
Taliban sources in Kabul said mortars and cannon were
being used to destroy the two giant Buddha statues in
Bamiyan in central Afghanistan, defying protests and
diplomatic pressure.
A day after the Taliban announced they had begun
destroying all statues in the more than 90 percent of
Afghanistan they control, a Pakistan-based Afghan
news service said explosives were being assembled to
blow up the two monuments.
``They are using any weapon they have got at the
Buddhas,'' said a Taliban official in Kabul who asked
not to be identified. ''Explosives, such as gunpowder,
have also been placed beneath the statues for more
effective action.''
Taliban leader Mullah Mohamad Omar has ruled that
all statues in Afghanistan should be destroyed because
they are un-Islamic. The Taliban compares keeping
statues with idol worship disallowed by Islam.
REACTION OF HORROR
Friend and foe alike have reacted with horror.
India termed the envisaged destruction ``a regression
into medieval barbarism'' and offered to look after the
artifacts for all mankind.
Muslim Iran, which has tense relations with Kabul, said
the monuments were part of the ``country's cultural and
national heritage and belong to the history of the
region's civilization in which all humanity has a share.''
Neighboring Muslim Pakistan, one of only three
country's along with Saudi Arabia and United Arab
Emirates to recognize the Taliban government, and
Buddhist Sri Lanka made fresh moves to dissuade the
radically Islamic movement from its plan.
A U.N. envoy warned the Taliban of a devastating
reaction if they go ahead.
Francesc Vendrell, assistant secretary-general and head
of the U.N. special mission to Afghanistan, said he had
told Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmad
Muttawakil of world wrath at the destruction in a
three-hour meeting in Kabul on Thursday.
``I conveyed to him the extremely serious concerns of
the secretary-general, of the international community,''
Vendrell said in an interview with Reuters in
Islamabad on returning from further meetings at the
Taliban's embassy there.
``I asked him to convey to the leadership that the
implementation of the edict would have devastating
effects for the image of the Taliban abroad,'' he said.
``And it would play right into the hands of the enemies
of the Taliban.''
OFFER TO BUY THE TREASURES
Vendrell said he had suggested the statues the Taliban
find so offensive -- they have said they could become
objects of worship -- be moved outside the country, and
had relayed an offer from New York's Metropolitan
Museum of Art to buy the treasures rather than see them
smashed.
``I was told that this would be transmitted to the
authorities in Kandahar and I very much hope that it is
not too late and that we can find a formula to preserve
these artefacts and these monuments, which are a
heritage of humanity of course, but also a heritage of the
Afghans,'' he said.
The Taliban has been seeking international recognition
as the legal government, replacing an anti-Taliban
alliance that it has driven into the northeast corner of
Afghanistan but which still holds the Afghan seat at the
United Nations.
Pakistan's issued its second appeal in two days.
``The government of Pakistan joins all other nations in
appealing to the Taliban government to reconsider and
rescind the reported decision regarding the statues of
Lord Buddha,'' a foreign ministry statement said.
Iran's Islamic government said the Taliban rulers were
giving Islam a bad name.
A foreign ministry spokesman, Hamid Reza Asefi, said
in Tehran that Taliban decision was ``yet another proof
of the backwardness which dominates this group's
thinking and of their...effort to depict Islam as violent.''
Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has
written to 14 nations, including all five permanent U.N.
Security Council members, urging them to make the
Taliban see reason, an Indian Foreign Ministry
statement said.
Sri Lanka said it would consider buying smaller
artifacts from the Taliban.
``We can certainly look at possibility of working with
other countries to buy the smaller statues if it's not
already too late,'' Foreign Minister Lakshman
Kadirgamar told a news conference in Colombo.
A Moroccan-based Islamic organization on Friday
urged the Taliban to stop the destruction, saying the
statues did no harm to Islam.
The Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization, a branch of the 55-member Organization
of Islamic Conference, said it had urged Kabul ``to
refrain from demolishing the statues and monuments'' in
Afghanistan which ``constituted a universal human
heritage.'' |
