ARJamadi-ul-Awwal, 28, 1418 A.H..

ISLAMABAD: European Commissioner Emma Bonino said on Tuesday the Taleban regime in Afghanistan had tendered apologies to her over her detention in Kabul and the incident was closed. Bonino, a Commissioner for humanitarian aid, was held for several hours on Monday by the Taleban after members of her entourage visiting Kabul to assess the aid situation took pictures of women.

Speaking at a news conference in Islamabad, she said the detention of herself and her entourage in a police station in Kabul on Monday was the result of some "misunderstanding" between the Afghan religious police and reporters accompanying her. "The incident which occurred yesterday in Kabul Polyclinic, and which led to the detention of my delegation and enforced custody by the religious police for more than three hours had its origin in a misunderstanding between our press people and local religious authorities," she said. However, Bonino said, "the incident was closed with the apologies of two members of the Taleban administration and I do not want to dramatise or dwell further on it."

Meanwhile, a spokesman for Bonino said that she had asked the Pakistan government to put pressure on the Taleban to moderate its policies. Bonino met Minister of State for foreign affairs Sidiqqi Kanju on Tuesday morning. "She asked the Pakistanis to pass on the message of moderation to the Taleban in their contacts with them," Bonino's spokesman Filippo di Robilant told journalists afterwards. Di Robilant said Bonino had described the Taleban's policies as being based on "fanaticism" in her meeting with Kanju. "This goes beyond the religious issue and is pure fanaticism," he reported Bonino as saying. Bonino told Kanju she was not being deliberately provocative in bringing the media with her on her visit to Kabul, where the Taleban had banned television and photographing living beings. "She reminded the Pakistanis that to continue the aid to Afghanistan -- and the countries of the European Union have given over $200 million in the last two years -- we have to be accountable, and therefore we have to bring t

he media with us to show what we are doing," said di Robilant.

Bonino's portfolio in the European Commission includes Humanitarian Affairs. She controls the budget for the European Community Humanitarian Office (ECHO). ECHO provided 40 million in funding for emergency programmes in Afghanistan in 1997, making it the single largest donor to Afghanistan. Bonino has been visiting Afghanistan to assess the aid situation. On Tuesday, she flew to the opposition-controlled town of Faizabad in northern Afghanistan where she was expected to meet opposition leader Burhanuddin Rabbani and commander Ahmed Shah Massoud.