Taliban Names PM, Interior Minister On Sanctions List

The Taliban drew from its inner high echelons to fill top posts in Afghanistan's new government on Tuesday, including an associate of the Islamist militant group's founder as premier and a wanted man on a US terrorism list as interior minister.

Photo Insert: The lineup of the new Afghanistan government consists of Taliban bigwigs under sanctions and wanted for terrorism.

World powers have told the Taliban the key to peace and development is an inclusive government that would back up its pledges of a more conciliatory approach, upholding human rights, after a previous 1996-2001 period in power marked by bloody vendettas and oppression of women.

Taliban supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzada, in his first public statement since the Aug. 15 seizure of the capital Kabul by the insurgents, said the Taliban were committed to all international laws, treaties, and commitments not in conflict with Islamic law.

"In the future, all matters of governance and life in Afghanistan will be regulated by the laws of the Holy Sharia," he said in a statement, in which he also congratulated Afghans on what he called the country's liberation from foreign rule.

The names announced for the new government, three weeks after the Taliban swept to military victory as US-led foreign forces withdrew and the weak Western-backed government collapsed, gave no sign of an olive branch to its opponents.

The US said it was concerned by the track records of some of the Cabinet members and noted that no women had been included. "The world is watching closely," a US State Department spokesperson said.

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