Germany is in discussions with Uzbekistan regarding a potential migration agreement that may involve deporting Afghan asylum seekers. The aim is to avoid direct negotiations with the Taliban, Bloomberg reports. After a German police officer was killed by an Afghan citizen in Mannheim, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz stated that Germany is in talks with Afghanistan's neighbouring countries to facilitate the deportation of Afghan migrants.
Scholz stated, "The Ministry of Interior is striving to facilitate the deportation of dangerous criminals to Afghanistan. This ministry is currently negotiating with Afghanistan's neighbouring countries regarding the practical implementation of this matter. We will also no longer tolerate the celebration of terrorist crimes."
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, a senior member of Scholz's centre-left Social Democrats, sent officials to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, at the end of May to negotiate a migration and deportation pact.
Under the proposed plan, Uzbekistan would accept a limited number of Afghan asylum seekers rejected and deported from Germany and then arrange for their onward transportation to neighbouring Afghanistan with the help of a private airline offering flights to Kabul.
The Uzbek government is considering the idea but wants any migration pact to also include bilateral rules allowing the legal migration of skilled workers from Uzbekistan to Germany.
Joachim Stamp, the German government's special representative for migration agreements, is expected to travel to Uzbekistan soon for further discussions on such an agreement.
"Serious criminals and terrorist threats have no place here," Scholz told lawmakers, adding that the interior ministry was working on the practical implementation and was already in talks with countries bordering Afghanistan. Germany had completely halted deportations to Afghanistan shortly before the Taliban came back to power in the summer of 2021.
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