For the second UN gathering of its sort in less than a year, national and regional special envoys to Afghanistan are set to meet in Doha on Sunday. However, there is still a cloud over whether Taliban leaders would attend.

According to a spokeswoman for Antonio Guterres, the two-day conference, which is being hosted by the UN secretary-general, will include stepping up cooperation with Afghanistan and developing a more coordinated approach to the Central Asian country.

Following the Taliban's 2021 comeback to power in Afghanistan, the international world has struggled to determine how to deal with the new government.

The administration's involvement in the convention is still unknown on the eve of the gathering in gas-rich Qatar, which played home to the Taliban during years of peace negotiations with the US. After the Taliban leadership were not allowed to attend the first conference in May, the UN has now invited them to the Doha convention.

The Taliban administration has stated that it will only do so if they are the only representatives of Afghanistan at the conference, barring representatives from civil society, a senior diplomatic source told AFP.

According to the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the conversations, the second demand was that the UN secretary-general meet with the Taliban government delegation and provide them a chance to convey their perspective.

Taliban representatives stated on Saturday that they had brought up their demands with the UN once more, stressing that their involvement in the discussions that the UN had arranged would be "unbeneficial" if those demands were not fulfilled.

-"Very important opportunity"-

Since assuming power, the Taliban's government in Kabul has not received formal recognition from any other country. The rule has enforced a rigid interpretation of Islam, including regulations that the UN has referred to as "gender apartheid" mostly targeting women.

In reaction, a number of nations, international organizations, and assistance organizations stopped supporting Afghanistan entirely or drastically reduced it, which had a negative impact on the country's already precarious economy.

The recommendations of an independent UN study on Afghanistan, which suggests that the lifting of restrictions on women's rights and access to education be a prerequisite for recognizing the Taliban's authority, will also be discussed during the summit in Qatar. The Taliban administration has also rejected the assessment, which is supported by Western countries and calls for the creation of a UN special envoy.

The EU's special envoy for Afghanistan, Tomas Niklasson, stated ahead of the meeting in Doha that it provided a "significant opportunity to meet to hold meaningful discussions" and "engage on a way forward, based on the report, in a UN-led process".

The conference in Doha, according to the UN's Working Group on Women, Peace, and Security, "offers an important opportunity for the UN, the Security Council, and the international community to reaffirm that the rights of Afghan women are not negotiable." "Respect for women's rights must be a core objective of the international community's engagement on Afghanistan, and a priority agenda item for discussions in Doha," it stated in a statement. 

End//voice7news.tv