Expelled EU, U.N. officials leave Afghanistan

By David Fox

KABUL (Reuters) - A senior United Nations official and another from the European Union left Afghanistan on Thursday after the government ordered their expulsion, accusing them of holding talks with the Taliban and for paying cash to the group.

The expulsions have caused a diplomatic row between the government and key aid agencies who fear the loss of two such experienced Afghan hands could hinder multi-million-dollar reconstruction and development efforts.

United Nations spokesman Aleem Siddique said the U.N. staffer had left on Thursday morning on a regular charter flight to neighboring Pakistan. Diplomats in Kabul confirmed the EU official, the mission's acting head, had been on the same flight.

While neither organization has formerly named the pair, it is common knowledge in the capital that they are Michael Semple and Mervin Patterson, who have lived and worked in Afghanistan for more than a decade, even during the rule of the Taliban that was toppled by the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.

Both are fluent in local languages and considered experts on the customs, rivalries and politics of Afghanistan's various tribal and racial groups.

The Afghan government declared the pair personae non gratae after accusing them of meeting Taliban officials last week in the troubled southern province of Helmand, a bastion of the insurgency and the main drug-producing region of Afghanistan.

EU and U.N. officials insist the pair were meeting only local elders and the whole affair was a "misunderstanding."

"As part of our efforts in Helmand province we need to be speaking to people on the ground," Siddique said.

VERY COMPLEX

"We are dealing with a very complex situation here in Afghanistan. Tribal communities and tribal relationships are a very complex web."

Afghan officials stood by the expulsions on Thursday.

"We are acting on the basis of our national interest. The two sides (EU and the U.N.) have agreed that they should go," one official told Reuters.

The U.N. spokesman said officials from all parties were meeting to see if the row could be resolved, but there were no plans at present to get U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon to appeal directly to Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

The governor of Helmand province, Assadullah Wafa, told a news conference on Thursday that Semple and Patterson had met insurgents who were organizing suicide attacks.

"They had met with those Taliban who are leaders of suicide attacks," he said, adding that the pair had told him they had been trying to win over Taliban insurgents to the government.