DIRECT. Afghanistan: Taliban officials meet with former senior Afghan leaders

The essential

• An Air Force flight carrying more than 200 passengers, including 25 French and a large majority of Afghans, including a large number of women and children, landed at Roissy on Wednesday evening.

• According to the US State Department, the Taliban are breaking their promise to guarantee access to Kabul airport to Afghans.

• From the United Arab Emirates where he was hosted, former President Ashraf Ghani assures that he wants to return to Afghanistan.

  Washington replies that he "is no longer a person who matters."

• The IMF suspends aid to Afghanistan citing a "lack of clarity" on the part of the international community as to the recognition of a government.

Follow the latest events of the day:

6:45 am.

The Americans will evacuate as many people as "possible".

Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin assures us that the United States will evacuate as many departing candidates from Afghanistan as "possible", admitting that it cannot guarantee safe access to the airport.

But "we don't have the capacity to go out (from the airport) and pick up a large number of people" in Kabul, he admitted.

"We cannot afford not to defend the airport."

6.30 a.m. Meeting with former senior Afghan leaders.

Taliban officials met with former Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Wednesday in Kabul the day after their pledge to work for national reconciliation. A gesture that the last head of state Ashraf Ghani, a refugee abroad, approved. The Taliban also met, according to the monitoring group of Islamist sites SITE, former vice-president Abdullah Abdullah.

6:15 am. The UN begins the withdrawal of some of its employees.

The United Nations has started the evacuation of some of its employees present in Afghanistan, said a spokesperson for the organization. Among them, a hundred UN employees will be evacuated to Almaty, Kazakhstan, according to Stéphane Dujarric, without specifying whether they were foreigners or Afghans.

6:10 am.

Joe Biden recognizes "difficulties" in the evacuations.

The President of the United States does not rule out having to keep American soldiers at Kabul airport beyond the August 31 deadline if all American nationals still in the country are not evacuated by then .

The Democrat admits on the other hand to encounter "more difficulties" to evacuate the Afghans than the Americans, while Washington accuses the Taliban of not keeping their promise to leave free access to the airport in Kabul.

6:05 am.

Hello everyone.

Welcome to this live stream dedicated to the latest events after the recent Taliban seizure of power in Afghanistan.