WASHINGTON (AP) — The State Department lashed out Thursday at House Republicans over a subpoena for testimony about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, accusing them of repeatedly calling for hearings on days they knew Secretary of State Antony Blinken was unavailable to appear.

Rep. Michael McCaul, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he was trying to accommodate Blinken, who faces the threat of being held in contempt of Congress if he doesn’t appear.

The Texas Republican had first set a hearing for Thursday, while Blinken was in Egypt and France. He then changed the date to Tuesday, when Blinken will be at the annual U.N. General Assembly gathering of world leaders in New York and attending President Joe Biden’s speech at the time of the hearing.

“They have unilaterally selected a date when we have told them in advance that he will be not in Washington, D.C., because he will be elsewhere carrying out important meetings to advance the foreign policy interests of the United States,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.

He said the State Department told the committee weeks in advance about Blinken’s schedule, so “it very much does not appear that they’re acting in good faith.”

McCaul said the department was being “disingenuous” because it had declined repeated requests to pick a date in September for Blinken to testify. “If we are forced to hold Secretary Blinken in contempt of Congress, he has no one to blame but himself,” the Republican committee chairman said Thursday in a statement.

The subpoena for Blinken’s testimony is the latest in a series of moves by McCaul and other House Republicans over the past 18 months to hold the Biden administration accountable for what they have called a “stunning failure of leadership” after Taliban forces seized the Afghan capital far more rapidly than U.S. intelligence had foreseen as American forces pulled out.

Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly brought up the disastrous exit from Afghanistan in the campaign, trying to link it to Democratic rival Kamala Harris. Several watchdog reviews and a more than 18-month investigation by House Republicans have failed to pinpoint an instance where the vice president had a particular impact on decision-making on the withdrawal.

Blinken has testified about Afghanistan 14 times, including four times before McCaul’s committee.

Miller said Blinken was willing to testify again if a mutually convenient time could be arranged but noted that Congress will be in recess from the end of next week until after the November election.

Earlier this month, House Republicans issued a scathing report on their investigation into the withdrawal, blaming the disastrous end of America’s longest war on the Biden administration and minimizing Trump’s role.

The partisan review laid out the final months of military and civilian failures, following Trump’s February 2020 withdrawal deal, which allowed the Taliban to conquer the country even before the last U.S. officials flew out on Aug. 30, 2021. The chaotic exit left behind many American citizens, Afghan battlefield allies, female activists and others at risk from the Taliban.

The report broke little new ground as the withdrawal has been exhaustively litigated through several independent reviews. Previous investigations and analyses have pointed to a systemic failure spanning the last four presidential administrations and concluded that Biden and Trump share the heaviest blame.

McCaul, who led the investigation, said the GOP review revealed that the Biden administration “had the information and opportunity to take necessary steps to plan for the inevitable collapse of the Afghan government, so we could safely evacuate U.S. personnel, American citizens, green card holders, and our brave Afghan allies.”

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The Taliban have suspended polio vaccination campaigns in Afghanistan, the U.N. said Monday. It’s a devastating setback for polio eradication, since the virus is one of the world’s most infectious and any unvaccinated groups of children where the virus is spreading could undo years of progress.

Afghanistan is one of two countries in which the spread of the potentially fatal, paralyzing disease has never been stopped. The other is Pakistan. It’s likely that the Taliban’s decision will have major repercussions for other countries in the region and beyond.

News of the suspension was relayed to U.N. agencies right before the September immunization campaign was due to start. No reason was given for the suspension, and no one from the Taliban-controlled government was immediately available for comment.

A top official from the World Health Organization said it was aware of discussions to move away from house-to-house vaccinations and instead have immunizations in places like mosques.

The WHO has confirmed 18 polio cases in Afghanistan this year, all but two in the south of the country. That’s up from six cases in 2023.

“The Global Polio Eradication Initiative is aware of the recent policy discussions on shifting from house-to-house polio vaccination campaigns to site-to-site vaccination in parts of Afghanistan,” said Dr. Hamid Jafari from the WHO. “Partners are in the process of discussing and understanding the scope and impact of any change in current policy.”

Polio campaigns in neighboring Pakistan are regularly marred by violence. Militants target vaccination teams and police assigned to protect them, falsely claiming that the campaigns are a Western conspiracy to sterilize children.

As recently as August, the WHO reported that Afghanistan and Pakistan were continuing to implement an “intensive and synchronized campaign” focusing on improved vaccination coverage in endemic zones and an effective and timely response to detections elsewhere.

During a June 2024 nationwide campaign, Afghanistan used a house-to-house vaccination strategy for the first time in five years, a tactic that helped to reach the majority of children targeted, the WHO said.

But southern Kandahar province, the base of Taliban supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, used site-to-site or mosque-to-mosque vaccination campaigns, which are less effective than going to people’s homes.

Kandahar continues to have a large pool of susceptible children because it is not carrying out house-to-house vaccinations, the WHO said. “The overall women’s inclusion in vaccination campaigns remains around 20% in Afghanistan, leading to inadequate access to all children in some areas,” it said.

Any setback in Afghanistan poses a risk to the program in Pakistan due to high population movement, the WHO warned last month.

Pakistani health official Anwarul Haq said the polio virus would eventually spread and continue affecting children in both countries if vaccination campaigns aren’t run regularly and in a synchronized manner.

“Afghanistan is the only neighbor from where Afghan people in large numbers come to Pakistan and then go back,” said Haq, the coordinator at the National Emergency Operation Center for Polio Eradication. “People from other neighboring countries, like India and Iran, don’t come to Pakistan in large numbers.”

There needs to be a united effort to eliminate the disease, he told The Associated Press.

The campaign suspension is the latest obstacle in what has become a problematic global effort to stop polio. The initiative, which costs about $1 billion every year, has missed multiple deadlines to wipe out the disease and technical mistakes in the vaccination strategy set by WHO and partners have been costly.

The oral vaccine has also inadvertently seeded outbreaks in dozens of countries across Africa, Asia and the Middle East and now accounts for the majority of polio cases worldwide.

This was seen most recently in Gaza, where a baby was partially paralyzed by a mutated strain of polio first seen in the oral vaccine, marking the territory’s first case in more than 25 years.

Associated Press writers Maria Cheng in London and Munir Ahmed in Islamabad contributed to this report.