Afghanistan crisis live updates: Govt employees face financial problems as offices shut down

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday said any suggestion the world body can solve Afghanistan's problems is "a fantasy" and that its capacity to mediate for a more inclusive Taliban government is limited. Asked in an interview with Reuters a month after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan from a Western-backed government whether he felt pressure to repair the country's plight, Guterres said: "I think there is an expectation that is unfounded" of UN influence as the main international organization still on the ground there.

Afghanistan's acting deputy prime minister Abdul Ghani Baradar appeared in a video interview posted on Wednesday to deny reports that he was hurt in a clash with a rival faction of the Taliban. "No this is not true; I am OK and healthy," Baradar said in an interview with state TV which was posted on Twitter by the Taliban's political office in Doha. "The media says that there is internal disputes. There is nothing between us, it is not true."

The US lawmakers on Tuesday, who were hearing US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on post-Afghan withdrawal from Kabul pushed for a harder line on Pakistan given its "duplicitous' role in the war-plagued country. At least two Congressmen, both Democrats, Bill Keating and Joaquin Castro focused on Pakistan's role in Afghanistan terming it "duplicitous." They also mentioned Prime Minister Imran Khan's public statements after the Taliban took over Kabul last month, reported The News International.

The statement, which was provided to Reuters ahead of its public release, was signed by two dozen officials operating in a kind of diplomatic twilight, with no government to represent but still working from missions in the United States, Britain, France, Turkey and elsewhere.