Afghanistan's Taliban officials will attend UN climate summit for second time

ISLAMABAD -- Afghanistan's Taliban officials have been invited as observers and are planning to attend an upcoming U.N. climate summit for the second time, a Kabul official said Tuesday. The summit starts next week in the Mediterranean city of Antalya in Turkey. Two years ago, they attended a previous summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, for the first time since the Taliban returned to power in 2021. Rohullah Amin, head of climate change at Afghanistan’s environment protection agency, confirmed to The Associated Press that Kabul plans to attend the summit, officially known as the Conference of the Parties, or COP31. A Turkish official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with government regulations, also said the Afghan Taliban would attend COP31 as observers. The United Nations has not allowed the Taliban to take up Afghanistan’s seat at the U.N. General Assembly, and the Afghan Taliban government is not formally recognized by U.N. member states, in part because of its severe restrictions on women’s education and freedom of movement. And since Baku, leadership groups of the U.N. climate conferences have deferred a decision on who represents Afghanistan, thereby largely freezing Kab...