Taliban chief turns down proposal to wall off Buddhist statues

The Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) news agency, quoting the Taliban ambassador in Islamabad, Abdussalam Zaeef, said a London-based Afghan engineer Abdullah Naveed, made the proposal to Omar.

"But the Ameerul Momineen (Omar's Islamic title) rejected it," Zaeef was quoted as saying.

No more details of the offer were available, nor any conclusive evidence of whether and how much the Bamiyan statues have been damaged since the campaign to demolish all statues declared as "un-Islamic" by the Omar.

Reports late Monday had said Taliban soldiers had demolished a quarter of each of the two ancient Buddha statues.

Zaeef had told the AIP that explosives were used to blast the sixth-century Bamiyan statues on Sunday.

Zaeef said he did not have the latest information on the state of the statues as a long holiday began in Afghanistan on Monday to celebrate the Islamic festival of Eid al Azha.

However, the official said Afghanistan did not intend to reverse its decision to destroy all statues in the country for being offensive to Islam.

Talks between the UNESCO envoy Pierre Lafrance and the Taliban foreign minister Mulla Wakil Ahmed Mutwakil on Sunday had also remained inconclusive, with Lafrance saying he would insist on a meeting with Omar after the Eid holidays to persuade him not to destroy ancient statues in the country.

"No, I was not able to persuade them," he told reporters at Islamabad airport, though he spoke of "very faint hopes" to reverse the situation.

The Taliban said last week it intended destroying all statues in Afghanistan under instructions from Omar, including the two giant 1,500 year-old standing Buddhas regarded as objects of great cultural importance.

"I just pointed out that in many other Islamic countries such heritage is respected and Islamic Ulema (scholars) have ideas on how to accommodate and preserve cultural heritage," Lafrance told reporters after returning to Islamabad Monday.

"I advised them (the Taliban) to postpone (the destruction) until they had consulted all the prominent Islamic scholars so as to form an important opinion," he said.

The Japanese ambassador in Pakistan, Sadaaka Numata had also conveyed to his Taliban counterpart Zaeef, that the destruction of Buddha statues could put jeopardise Japanese economic aid to Afghanistan.

Afghanistan's former president, Burhanuddin Rabbani, meanwhile has condemned the Taliban for demolishing historic statues.

"We strongly condemn this anti-national and anti-cultural action in respect to the destruction of Buddhist statues," Rabbani, still internationally recognised as the president of the war-battered country, said in a statement faxed from his headquarters in Faisabad, northern Afghanistan, to news agencies.

U.N sources, requesting anonymity, however, said the grand Buddha statues, may still be intact.

"Right now American and Russian satellites must be focussing on the statues' location, and had any destruction taken place, at least the Americans would have come out with a protest," said a source.

Most countries, including Japan, India, Sri Lanka, and China with big Buddhist followings, have repeatedly urged the Taliban to refrain from demolishing the colossal statues, and also offered to take them out of Afghanistan for preservation.

But Taleban leaders have spurned all appeals, saying their decision, which is driven by Islam and not by politics, is irreversible.

(kil/dpa)