Britain's Foreign Secretary said he would have liked to have returned from holiday sooner as the Taliban were rapidly advanced on Kabul.
But Dominic Raab rejected reports that he was “lounging on the beach” and insisted he was focused on evacuations and securing Kabul’s airport.
“With hindsight I wouldn’t have gone away at all,” he told the BBC.
Mr Raab faced calls to resign after it was revealed he was on holiday in Greece and returned on August 15, the day the Taliban captured the Afghan capital.
He was also criticised for failing to call his Afghan counterpart to discuss plans to fly interpreters to safety, but he defended his actions.
“The idea that I was lounging on a beach or … paddleboarding in the ocean, I mean, these things are just nonsense," he said. "In fact, the sea wasn’t open because there was a red flag. So, no one was paddleboarding.”
Mr Raab emphasised that the UK had helped more than 9,000 people leave Afghanistan since August 15.
All Nato forces are set to withdraw from Kabul by August 31, effectively ending their capacity to fly people from the airport to safety.
G7 countries say the Taliban must ensure that anyone who wants to leave Afghanistan must be allowed to do so, even after August 31.
“We will use every last remaining hour and day to get everyone we can back, the British nationals, the Afghans who worked so loyally for us, we are getting the Chevening scholars back, also women's rights defenders and journalists,” Mr Raab told Sky News.
“Mono-nationals, so single-nationality UK who have got documentation, the lion's share, almost all of them that want to come out have been brought home.”
Referring to the Taliban, Mr Raab said: “What we have then got to do is test them beyond the withdrawal date, will they still allow safe passage, as they have undertaken, will they allow humanitarian groups the permissive environment to be able to operate?
“So, there is a next stage of engagement, not recognition, engagement with the Taliban, and we will hold them very clearly to the assurances that they are already stating.”
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Profile
Company: Justmop.com
Date started: December 2015
Founders: Kerem Kuyucu and Cagatay Ozcan
Sector: Technology and home services
Based: Jumeirah Lake Towers, Dubai
Size: 55 employees and 100,000 cleaning requests a month
Funding: The company’s investors include Collective Spark, Faith Capital Holding, Oak Capital, VentureFriends, and 500 Startups.
Salah in numbers
€39 million: Liverpool agreed a fee, including add-ons, in the region of €39m (nearly Dh176m) to sign Salah from Roma last year. The exchange rate at the time meant that cost the Reds £34.3m - a bargain given his performances since.
13: The 25-year-old player was not a complete stranger to the Premier League when he arrived at Liverpool this summer. However, during his previous stint at Chelsea, he made just 13 Premier League appearances, seven of which were off the bench, and scored only twice.
57: It was in the 57th minute of his Liverpool bow when Salah opened his account for the Reds in the 3-3 draw with Watford back in August. The Egyptian prodded the ball over the line from close range after latching onto Roberto Firmino's attempted lob.
7: Salah's best scoring streak of the season occurred between an FA Cup tie against West Brom on January 27 and a Premier League win over Newcastle on March 3. He scored for seven games running in all competitions and struck twice against Tottenham.
3: This season Salah became the first player in Premier League history to win the player of the month award three times during a term. He was voted as the division's best player in November, February and March.
40: Salah joined Roger Hunt and Ian Rush as the only players in Liverpool's history to have scored 40 times in a single season when he headed home against Bournemouth at Anfield earlier this month.
30: The goal against Bournemouth ensured the Egyptian achieved another milestone in becoming the first African player to score 30 times across one Premier League campaign.
8: As well as his fine form in England, Salah has also scored eight times in the tournament phase of this season's Champions League. Only Real Madrid's Cristiano Ronaldo, with 15 to his credit, has found the net more often in the group stages and knockout rounds of Europe's premier club competition.
The%20specs
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