Kabul airport to be operational soon: Qatar FM

Qatar expects to have Kabul’s airport "operational very soon” and has urged the Taliban to help facilitate the evacuation of Afghans stranded after the end of a massive US airlift staged as its last troops left the country.

Speaking at a joint news conference in Doha with his US counterpart, Qatari Foreign Minister HE Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said his country had dispatched teams to provide technical assistance to get the airport up and running, though an agreement with the Taliban over the resumption of international fights had yet to be reached. "We have fixed a lot of the elements which are over there, and we are about to get everything operational very soon,” he said. "Right now we didn’t reach yet an agreement on the way to manage, or to run the airport.”