NEW YORK: UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres urged the Taliban to show "the utmost restraint to protect lives" and demanded that anyone who wanted to leave the country must be able to do so.
All countries should be willing to take in Afghan refugees and stop deportations to Afghanistan, added the chief of the United Nations at a special session of the UN Security Council in New York on Monday.
Guterres also said that humanitarian organisations needed to be allowed to continue their work after the Taliban took power in Afghanistan. The Taliban seems for the most part to have respected the UN staff and facilities in several places in Afghanistan that are now under the group's control, Guterres said.
The UN's continued presence in Afghanistan would depend on how the situation developed, added Guterres.
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden will break his silence on the US fiasco in Afghanistan with an address to the nation from the White House, as a lightning Taliban victory sent the Democrat's domestic political fortunes reeling. SEE ALSO P7
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