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Foreign Minister Dominic Raab first addressed the question about his vacation on Crete when the Taliban advanced Afghanistan and occupied Kabul.
“With the benefit of hindsight, I would have been back, but we were all surprised at the scale and pace of the collapse of the situation,” Rab told Sky News, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson told him two. He denied reports that he had ordered him to go home for days. Before he comes back.
He claims that paddleboarding at the time of the fall of Kabul was “nonsense” and that the sea was closed that day.
He told the BBC: [emergency] The Cobra Conference will work with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs emergency response team to make the necessary international efforts. “
Some opposition lawmakers were on vacation as the crisis progressed and called for Raab to resign after it was revealed that he had delegated a call to the Afghan foreign minister.
The Liberal Democratic Party called for Mr. Raab to publish the advice he received from foreign ministry officials or the prime minister regarding permission to go on vacation.
The Foreign Ministry later stated that Raab was able to handle priorities during the holidays.
I can’t receive the call
Initially, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the Minister of Foreign Affairs had other high-priority phones, so it was delegated to other staff.
The Foreign Ministry later revealed that the situation had deteriorated so rapidly that Raab couldn’t get the call, so he couldn’t make the call.
When asked about the allegations that his department had asked him to return home on Friday, August 13, in BBC Radio 4’s “Today” program, Raab said: I didn’t go home. “
Rab said he didn’t want to add any more media speculation. “What I can say is that from that period I was engaged in a hotel room. My family was on the beach, not me. I accidentally checked them in, but I The idea of being laid back on the beach is totally nonsense. “
Foreign Ministers also faced questions about when the last evacuation flight departed Kabul, after US President Joe Biden yesterday excluded troops from staying beyond the August 31 deadline.
“The time frame is in the hands of military planners,” Raab said. “Use the time and days needed to maximize throughput every day to eliminate as many of the remaining cases as possible.” I added.
According to The Daily Telegraph, former Secretary of Defense Sir David Richards said on August 25 that there were only two days left to evacuate civilians before the process of military withdrawal.
But Richards said he was confident that British troops would continue to “sneak in with others who arrived late with their own.”
According to Raab, “almost all” single-national British citizens who wanted to return are now leaving Afghanistan.
Simon Veazey
Freelance reporter
Simon Veazey is a UK-based journalist who has been reporting on the Epoch Times since 2006 on a variety of beats, from detailed coverage of British and European politics to web-based writing of the latest news.
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