The U.S. State Department has warned American companies to exercise extreme caution when considering any business deal with Afghanistan under Taliban rule and to ensure their activities comply with U.S. laws and regulations.<\/p>\n
A department spokesman told the media that private companies interested in working in Afghanistan should bear in mind that the Taliban administration remains on the list of \u201cDesignated Global Terrorist Groups.\u201d Under the warning, any economic interaction that does not comply with legal restrictions could carry legal and sanctions-related consequences for companies and individuals.<\/p>\n
The stance came after a visit to Kabul by Zalmay Khalilzad, the former U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan. He attended last week\u2019s signing ceremony for an oil and gas agreement between the Saudi company Delta International Energy and the Taliban administration\u2019s Ministry of Mines and Petroleum, and also met with Amir Khan Muttaqi, the acting foreign minister of the Taliban administration.<\/p>\n
Khalilzad\u2019s presence on the trip drew criticism, given that the United States has not recognized the Taliban administration. Washington said in response that Khalilzad is no longer a U.S. government employee and does not represent the country officially.<\/p>\n
The U.S. Treasury Department has also said that U.S. citizens and companies are generally not permitted to conduct transactions, payments, contracts, service provision or financial cooperation with individuals and entities included on the country\u2019s sanctions lists. It added that non-U.S. companies and individuals could also face U.S. sanctions and civil or criminal penalties if they enter into certain transactions with sanctioned groups.<\/p>\n
The United States has so far not recognized the Taliban administration, and the country\u2019s sanctions restrictions remain one of the main obstacles to the expansion of official and economic ties with Afghanistan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The US has warned companies to avoid risky deals with Taliban-run Afghanistan and to comply with sanctions and legal restrictions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21709,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}