WORLD / Asia-Pacific
More S.Korean hostage talks sought
(AP)
Updated: 2007-07-30 16:03
KABUL, Afghanistan - An Afghan governor pleaded Monday with the Taliban
to extend a deadline for the lives of 22 South Koreans after militants
warned the Afghan government to release some of its captured fighters or
else hostages will die.
Marajudin Pathan, the governor of Ghazni province where the South Koreans
went missing on July 19, said that authorities talked to the Taliban
after they set the Monday deadline and asked for two more days of talks.
"Fortunately, they did not reject our demand outright, but said that they
need to talk to their leaders," Pathan said.
Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi said Sunday the militant group had
given a list of 23 insurgent prisoners it wants released and if they
weren't freed by noon (3:30 a.m. EDT) Monday, some hostages would be
killed.
"It might be a man or a woman ... We may kill one, we may kill two, we
may kill one of each (gender), two of each, four of each," Ahmadi told
The Associated Press by satellite phone from an unknown location. "Or we
may kill all of them at once."
There was no immediate comment from the Taliban on Pathan's extension
demand.
Last week the Taliban set several deadlines that passed without
consequence, and it wasn't clear how seriously the militants would treat
their latest ultimatum for the 22 remaining South Korean hostages,
including 18 women.
A leader of the group was shot and killed on Wednesday but it was unclear
why.
On Sunday, President Hamid Karzai and other Afghan officials tried to
shame the Taliban into releasing 18 female South Korean captives, an
attempt to tap into a tradition of cultural hospitality and chivalry.
In his first comments since the hostages were abducted, Karzai criticized
the Taliban's kidnapping of "foreign guests," especially women, as
contrary to the tenets of Islam.
"The perpetration of this heinous act on our soil is in total contempt of
our Islamic and Afghan values," Karzai told a South Korean envoy during a
meeting at the presidential palace, according to a statement from his
office.
Echoing Karzai's words, Afghanistan's national council of clerics said
the Prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam, taught that no one has the
right to kill women, children or elders.
"Even in the history of Afghanistan, in all its combat and fighting,
Afghans respected women, children and elders," the council said. "The
killing of women is against Islam, against the Afghan culture, and they
shouldn't do it."
But the Taliban spokesman instead invoked the religious tenet of "an eye
for an eye," alleging that Western militaries are holding Afghan females
at bases in Bagram and Kandahar, and the Taliban can do the same. He said
the Taliban could detain and kill "women, men or children."
The South Koreans were kidnapped while traveling by bus on the
Kabul-Kandahar highway, Afghanistan's main thoroughfare. Their church has
said the captives were not involved in Christian missionary work in
Afghanistan, but that it will suspend some of its volunteer work there.
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