The U.S. is pushing to extend a United Nations waiver on a travel ban against the Taliban, Western officials say, an effort meant to facilitate negotiations with the group and part of the U.S.’s broader diplomatic overture to encourage the group to abide by its human rights and antiterror commitments.

       If approved by the U.N. Security Council, the extension of the waiver would allow a Taliban delegation to travel to Doha, Qatar, where negotiations with U.S. officials have typically been held. The current waiver expires next week and the Security Council on Tuesday is expected to consider extending it. The waiver would also allow access to banking services while traveling.

       “I think it will be extended by Wednesday," said Eoghan McSwiney, a senior diplomat at Ireland’s mission to the U.N. He said the current proposal is to allow a three-month waiver for the same individuals previously approved to travel.

       “There’s a general understanding that they’ll need to be able to travel to continue to facilitate talks, whatever the future of Afghanistan looks like," he said.

       “Discussions are under way on [the] possible extension" of the travel waivers, added a diplomat at the Security Council. “The decision will have to be taken by consensus, as is the case with decisions of the sanctions committees," he said.

       Besides the U.S. and Ireland—which holds the Council’s rotating presidency—other members include the United Kingdom, France, China and Russia.

       “This exemption has facilitated in-person communications between the Taliban and U.S. and other international officials, allowing us to state clearly our expectations for their behavior,’’ said a spokesman for the U.S. mission at the U.N. “Of course, safe passage remains a high priority for the United States and others in the international community," he added, referring to Americans, other expats and Afghan allies trying to leave the county.

       As the U.S. grapples with how to handle both the short-term crisis of its pullout from Afghanistan and the long-term reality of having to now deal with the Taliban as the country’s ruling power, the Biden administration has been wary of both provoking the group with more sanctions and easing the pressure campaign against them.

       U.N. member nations agreed under Security Council sanctions levied after the Sept. 11 attacks two decades ago to prevent blacklisted Taliban members from traveling outside Afghanistan. A narrow exemption to that travel ban—allowing restricted travel by a few named individuals—was originally issued in 2019 by the U.N. Security Council to facilitate peace talks in Qatar to end a war between the Islamist faction and the U.S.-backed Afghan government.

       The sanctions also require blocking and freezing Taliban assets.

       But contrary to its commitments in the peace deal reached in February 2020 with the Trump administration, the Taliban took advantage of the agreed U.S. pullout to seize control of the country, taking over the capital and the government in mid-August. U.S. officials say the Taliban are violating the terms by continuing to allow al Qaeda’s presence in the country and hindering asylum seekers from leaving Afghanistan.

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       The Taliban, meanwhile, say the U.S. isn’t honoring its commitments made in 2020 to lift sanctions against the group.

       “The United States has made a commitment in this regard but has not fulfilled it yet," said Anas Haqqani, a senior leader of the Taliban whose brother heads the terrorist-designated Haqqani network, on Thursday in a meeting with foreign journalists in Kabul.

       U.S. officials say its commitment to consider lifting sanctions and to ask the U.N. to do the same was contingent on the Taliban complying with the deal’s terms.

       In the wake of the Taliban’s seizure of the country, the Biden administration has been weighing how to leverage the sanctions and Afghanistan’s financing needs in its post-takeover talks with the Taliban.

       Among the 11 members of the Taliban currently allowed to travel are Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the head of the Taliban’s political office who’s now acting first deputy prime minister of Afghanistan. The waiver allows them to travel to an unspecified range of destinations for the purpose of peace negotiations. It is yet unclear how broadly the new exemption would allow the Taliban representatives to travel.

       “These exemptions were for the benefit of talks with the Afghan government," said a European official familiar with the proposed exemption. “That government no longer exists."

       The waiver extension is likely to draw further criticism from some Republican lawmakers who have criticized the Biden administration’s overtures to the Taliban, but U.S. and allied officials say their treatment of the new government in Afghanistan will be determined by the Taliban’s behavior.

       “We will calibrate our approach to the Taliban according to the actions they take,’’ Barbara Woodward, the U.K.’s ambassador to the U.N., said at a Security Council meeting Friday.

       Ghulam Isaczai, who was appointed Afghanistan’s ambassador to the U.N. under the former government and is still treated as the country’s envoy by the Security Council, last week urged against an extension of the travel-ban waiver.

       “Any further extension of the mechanism would be misused for the purpose of gaining international recognition for their new noninclusive government," he said.

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