After the evacuation flights have ceased, they are trying to get them out of the country by land, said Schallenberg on Sunday in the ORF “press hour”. To this end, the Foreign Ministry has crisis teams, reinforced by the Defense and Interior Ministries, in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad and the Iranian capital Tehran.
217 Austrians have been pulled out of Afghanistan since the radical Islamic Taliban came to power, so Schallenberg. It is difficult to give an exact number of how many Austrians are still in Afghanistan because this number changes every day. Efforts to get people out of Afghanistan by land are “of course associated with a risk”, but so far they have been “quite successful”.
Feared after the Taliban seized power Schallenbergthat Kabul could become both “a safe haven and a breeding ground” and “an exporter of international terrorism and extremism”. That is why the international community must “do everything to ensure that Afghanistan does not become a black hole in terms of security policy”. This would have “the potential to involve the entire region”.
Warning of two-class society
Together with Federal Chancellor Sebastian Kurz (VP) wants Schallenberg therefore organize a round table next Tuesday as part of the UN General Assembly in New York, at which, according to information from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in addition to UNHCR High Commissioner Filippo Grandi and representatives of UN Women, the UN Children’s Fund UNICEF, the UNDP development program, the International Committee of the Red Kreuz (ICRC) also the foreign ministers of the neighboring country Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Qatar as well as representatives of EU states are to take part. The focus is on the protection of women and girls in Afghanistan and the region.
Video: Schallenberg and his attitude towards a possible acceptance of people from Afghanistan
On the question of how the European Union should deal with the Taliban Schallenberg“The basic conditions for considering recognition of the Taliban government are its” respect for fundamental and civil liberties, respect for minority rights, especially women’s rights, humane access and an inclusive government “. At present, however, everything indicates that the “leap of confidence in the Taliban is justified,” said Schallenberg. He referred, among other things, to the government team presented by the Taliban, which is “anything but inclusive” and whose members are “almost continuously on the terror lists of the UN and the EU” and the renaming of the Ministry of Women to a Ministry of Virtue.
Warned in the internal EU conflict with Hungary and Poland over rule of law concerns Schallenberg in front of a “two-class society within Europe”. Austria in particular, as “the country that has benefited most from the eastward expansion”, has a “strategic interest that this continent grows together, that there is never again a dividing line where the Iron Curtain was”. In his view, the European merger project will only be completed “when every state of the former Yugoslavia” is a member of the EU, said the Foreign Minister.
“FP air storm against vaccinations”
Overall, the state of the EU is “much better than you think”, stressed Schallenberg and referred, among other things, to the EU-internal solidarity in the corona crisis such as the joint procurement of vaccines and the digital green passport. The Foreign Minister described the European Union as “the greatest project that Europe has ever taken on”.
In connection with the comparatively low corona vaccination rate in Austria, bte Schallenberg severe criticism of the FP. While the government and experts would “pull together”, be it only the FP, which “is clearly and ostentatiously storming against the vaccinations”. He thinks it is “irresponsible”, so Schallenberg. Compared to autumn 2020, you now have “the exit ticket” from the pandemic in hand – “and that is the vaccination,” emphasized the Foreign Minister. The fact that Austria may “stumble into a pandemic of the unvaccinated because there are too many hesitants and procrastinators” is something that depresses him very much.
Criticism of the statements Schallenbergs came from FP General Secretary Michael Schnedlitz, who accused the Foreign Minister in a broadcast of “scapegoat rhetoric against unvaccinated people” and identified a “black and green corona coercive regime against its own citizens”. A government “who wants to shut people who decide against a corona vaccination out of society, from their professional life and soon even from the social system – keyword unemployment benefits and minimum income – instead of locking out illegal migrants from our country” has “the wrong priorities “, so Schnedlitz.
