{"id":613,"date":"2001-03-20T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2001-03-20T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2001\/03\/20\/2001-03-20-us-rejects-taliban-explanation-on-buddhas\/"},"modified":"2001-03-20T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2001-03-20T12:00:00","slug":"2001-03-20-us-rejects-taliban-explanation-on-buddhas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2001\/03\/20\/2001-03-20-us-rejects-taliban-explanation-on-buddhas\/","title":{"rendered":"US Rejects Taliban Explanation On Buddhas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.indiaabroaddaily.com\/2001\/03\/20\/20taliban1.html \">GO TO SOURCE<\/A><\/P><br \/>\n<P><\/p>\n<p>WASHINGTON, U.S.A, March 20, 2001: The US has dismissed as &#8220;inaccurate and self-serving&#8221; the Taliban militia&#8217;s explanation that it blew up two giant Buddha statues in Afghanistan in a fit of pique after a foreign delegation offered money to help preserve these ancient artifacts. &#8220;We definitely don&#8217;t buy this explanation,&#8221; State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said after US officials had a &#8220;working-level&#8221; meeting with Taliban representative Sayed Rahmatullah Hashimi. Earlier, Hashimi who expressed no remorse over the demolitions, told The New York Times that the Taliban made its decision in a rage after the delegation including a representative of Unesco offered money for the statues while a million Afghans faced starvation. &#8220;When your children are dying, you don&#8217;t care about a piece of art,&#8221; he added.<br \/>\n<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>GO TO SOURCE WASHINGTON, U.S.A, March 20, 2001: The US has dismissed as &#8220;inaccurate and self-serving&#8221; the Taliban militia&#8217;s explanation,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}