The militant Islamist Taliban have assured several countries that their citizens and local staff will be allowed to leave the country.

The Taliban had given assurances that "all foreign nationals and all Afghan citizens with a travel permit from our countries are allowed to travel safely and orderly to departure points and out of the country," said a joint statement published on Sunday by more than 20 countries , including the United States and Germany.

Peter Carstens

Political correspondent in Berlin

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Certain Afghans will continue to be issued travel documents, and the Taliban have a clear expectation and promise that they will be able to travel to the respective countries, the statement said.

Also take note of the Taliban's public statements confirming this understanding.

In the past few days, several high-ranking Taliban had publicly assured that Afghans could continue to leave the country legally.

The German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas is meanwhile traveling to the region to discuss the possibilities and conditions of safe admission in neighboring countries.

On the way to his multi-day trip to Central Asia, Maas first met his colleague Mavlüt Cavusoglu, who is on vacation there, in the Turkish coastal city of Antalya.

The main focus there was on the continued operation of Kabul Airport and refugee issues.

after the meeting, however, Cavosoglu stated that Turkey was not ready to accept any more Afghan refugees.

"Turkey has taken on its ethical responsibility," said Cavusoglu in Antalya. "We cannot take on any additional migration burdens." The country had already taken in several hundred thousand Afghan migrants in recent years.

Payments in exchange for concessions

Along with Iran, Turkey is one of the most important transit countries for the people who have left Afghanistan. The number of those who are trying to get to Europe by land has been rising for months, and after the surrender to the Taliban, an increase must be expected. Turkey has also offered to help rebuild civilian air traffic after the withdrawal of the last western military.

Late in the evening, the Maas is supposed to fly on to Uzbekistan, which played a key role in bringing about the German airlift between Kabul and Tashkent, through which more than 5,000 people seeking protection were flown out in the two weeks before, including more than 4,000 Afghans.

Maas then flies on Tuesday to Tajikistan and from there to Pakistan, where the Taliban terrorist organization had its refuge for years to fight the Afghan central government and the West.

At the end of the trip, Maas wants to meet his counterpart in Qatar.

The country is currently the scene of negotiations with the Taliban about travel options and aid from the global community.

They have already been promised payments in case they are willing to make concessions.

Since the start of the Taliban offensive, Maas has been confronted with allegations that he and his office, but also Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) and Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (CDU) did too little to get people in need of protection out of Afghanistan in good time.

Maas' resignation had been called for on several occasions.

Serious allegations by the organization "Airlift"

Now a civil organization, Luftbrücke eV, is accusing the Foreign Office of having thwarted, if not prevented, their attempt to fly out local staff. An aircraft chartered by the organization and arriving in Kabul via Tbilisi and Egypt had to leave the airport with far fewer people than intended after a short period of stay, despite many attempts to make arrangements and active support from Maas, among others. It was supposed to fly to Qatar.

Both the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defense had previously stressed that there was much more flight capacity than needed; the difficulty was to get individuals, groups, or convoys safely through the city and to the airport. The duration of such operations was three to 30 hours. It was difficult to assign individual groups to a particular flight. Both the Federal Foreign Office and the Bundeswehr had offered to fly out the people who were looked after by the association with one of the Luftwaffe machines.

After several attempts at self-organized departure, the operation failed; the charter plane left Kabul airport with a few who were reportedly protected by the Portuguese government. Before that, attempts were still made to offer Italy to bring people seeking protection onto these machines. The Bundeswehr had previously taken Italian seekers or Afghans with them to Italy. However, Italy does not report any further demand. Some of the people on the club's list were able to leave the country in other ways.