BBC News Online: World: South Asia

Taliban denies UN blockade charge

The Taliban authorities have denied imposing a blockade on an opposition-held enclave in northern Afghanistan, as alleged on Monday in a report by the United Nations.

The Taliban foreign minister, Wakil Ahmad Mutawakel, said the UN report was false and provocative: the Taliban, he said, did not deny food and other necessities to any member of the public.

He said the Taliban had agreed to UN food convoys and an air drop for the area -- the Dara-i-Souf valley.

The UN report had said a Taliban blockade on the valley was aggravating the impact there of the drought affecting Afghanistran, with twenty-seven people, most of them children, dying from starvation.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service