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Taliban push back deadline over hostages
Staff and agencies
Monday July 23, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
The Taliban have extended their deadline over the threatened execution of 23
South Korean hostages to Tuesday evening.
Qari Yousef Ahmadi, who claims to speak for the hardline militia, said the
deadline had been extended by another day after the Afghan government refused
to release 23 Taliban prisoners in return for the lives of the hostages.
The militants have pushed back their ultimatum on the South Koreans' fate at
least three times.
Afghan officials in the Ghazni province have met the militants in person and
were also negotiating over the phone, but little progress appeared to have been
made.
Intense diplomatic efforts were also under way to secure the release of the
aid workers, who were kidnapped from a public bus en route to Kabul.
In the wake of the kidnappings, South Korea today banned its citizens from
travelling to Afghanistan. An official said Seoul had also asked Kabul not to
issue visas to South Koreans and to block their entry through different routes.
Under a new passport law that is set to come into effect tomorrow, violators
could face up to a year in prison or be fined up to 3m won (£1,500) if they
visit banned countries without government permission.
Earlier, a South Korean church attended by the abductees said it would
suspend at least some of its volunteer work in Afghanistan.
It also stressed that the South Koreans abducted in Afghanistan last week
were not involved in any Christian missionary work, saying they provided only
medical and other volunteer aid to distressed people in the war-ravaged
country.
"We are sorry for causing trouble, but it is not right that the activities
are misunderstood as missionary works," the Rev Bang Young-gyun of the Saemmul
community church in Bundang said.
Negotiations involving the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, Korean hostage
negotiators and local tribal elders took place at the weekend as tearful
relatives held a candlelit vigil outside the aid workers' church in Seoul.
The sense of urgency grew after it was reported that the body of a German
engineer who had been abducted in a separate incident was found in Wardak
province, near Kabul. However, today the Taliban claimed the German hostage was
still alive.
The South Korean aid workers, including 18 women, were abducted from a public
bus travelling from Kandahar to Kabul on one of Afghanistan's most dangerous
routes. They included nurses and English teachers in their 20s and 30s. They
apparently had tried to disguise themselves by wearing burkas.
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