KABUL - The United Nations is reviewing the names of the Taliban and al-Qaeda figures on its sanctions list following a call by last week's peace conference in Afghanistan, the top UN envoy said on Saturday. UN Security Council Resolution 1267 freezes the assets and limits the movements of senior Afghan-based militants, but recent efforts to include some Taliban in diplomacy have raised questions in Kabul about the blacklist's appropriateness. Staffan de Mistura, the UN secretary-general's special representative, said a Security Council team had come in to discuss "updating" the 137-name list, and was expected to submit recommendations to the council by month's end. "Updating means taking on or taking off based on additional new information. Some of the people in the list may not be alive any more. The list may be completely outdated ... Now it's the right time," de Mistura, speaking in English, told reporters. "They are obviously hearing a message from Kabul." A statement summarizing the June 2-4 meeting of 1,600 tribal and religious leaders in Kabul urged the Afghan government and foreign powers to "take serious action in getting the names of those in opposition removed from the consolidated blacklist." It also demanded amnesty for Afghans who have been jailed "based on inaccurate information or unsubstantiated allegations" - an especially touchy complaint given the humanitarian arguments behind the US-led invasion to hunt down al-Qaeda and crush its ruling Taliban sponsors in late 2001. De Mistura said the United Nations was ready to help a committee set up to assess due process of law for detainees in prisons run by the government and by NATO-led forces. "There was a common feeling among my human rights colleagues that there were many people who were detained without legal basis, and that could be a possible criterion along which one judges both the liberation of those that are detained, both on the political grounds or on other grounds, from both prisons - the national and international ones," he said. While saying he deferred to the will of the Afghan people, De Mistura appeared to support those seeking engagement with Taliban who disavow al-Qaeda and support the new national constitution.
