Afghanistan's former president Hamid Karzai speaks during a press conference in Kabul, capital of Afghanistan, Feb. 13, 2022. Karzai on Sunday urged the U.S. administration to return his country's assets. (Photo by Saifurahman Safi/Xinhua)
KABUL, Feb. 13 (Xinhua) -- Afghanistan's former president Hamid Karzai on Sunday urged the U.S. administration to return his country's assets.
"Holding Afghanistan's money on any name is unfair and unjust. That money belongs to the people of Afghanistan ... I am calling on President Joe Biden to return the money to the people of Afghanistan," Karzai told a press conference here.
The United States, following its forces' exit from Afghanistan in August 2021, has frozen more than 9 billion U.S. dollars of assets of Afghanistan's central bank. The move is widely seen as the major factor leading to the current economic crisis in the war-torn Asian country.
U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Friday which seeks to split 7 billion U.S. dollars out of the Afghan assets between funding humanitarian aid for cash-strapped Afghanistan and creating a trust fund with 3.5 billion U.S. dollars to compensate the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Karzai said the Afghan people share the grief of the American people have suffered due to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, yet no Afghan was involved in the attack and therefore Biden has to reconsider his decision.
Criticizing Biden's decision as unjust, Karzai stressed that all Afghans including members of the present Taliban-led caretaker government take a united stand to get the Afghan money back to their country. ■
Afghanistan's former president Hamid Karzai speaks during a press conference in Kabul, capital of Afghanistan, Feb. 13, 2022. Karzai on Sunday urged the U.S. administration to return his country's assets. (Photo by Saifurahman Safi/Xinhua)
