Afghan foreign minister resigns

KABUL, Afghanistan

Afghanistan’s Foreign Minister Salahuddin Rabbani resigned suddenly from his post on Wednesday.

In his resignation letter addressed to President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani, Rabbani said working space in the National Unity Government was not desired from the very early days of this government in 2014 until now 2019.

“During this time, I've seen that by creating parallel structures and bringing down institutions that have the prestige of the state in all systems of the world, the structure of the government was treated as a personal community,” he said with a thinly veiled reference to Ghani’s “State Builder” election team.

Rabbani is in the rival camp “Stability and Partnership” of the chief executive Abdullah Abdullah.

Earlier this month, Abdullah and Rabbani stood against President Ghani’s move of firing the Foreign Ministry spokesman over remarks related to the Taliban delegation’s visit to Pakistan.

Ghani has been furious with Rabbani with the last year report by anti-corruption watchdog MEC that said concerns about interference in hiring and deployments at the ministry go beyond violation of the standard rules and procedures and may affect Afghanistan’s strategic foreign relations objectives.