Taliban say two South Korean hostages freed
Posted: 11 August 2007 2323 hrs
GHAZNI, Afghanistan - Afghanistan's Taliban said Saturday it has
freed two women among 21 South Korean hostages captured more than
three weeks ago by the hardline militia.
Two spokesman for the insurgents said both women were ill and had
been freed unconditionally as a "gesture of goodwill," just hours
after the conclusion of face-to-face talks between the Taliban and
a South Korean delegation.
Neither Afghan nor South Korean officials would immediately confirm
any hostage release.
"Our leadership council decided to free unconditionally and as a
gesture of goodwill two women hostages who are sick," said the main
Taliban spokesman, Yousuf Ahmadi.
Ahmadi said they might not yet have arrived at the point where they
would be handed over to authorities "due to some transportation
difficulty."
"But what I can tell you is the leadership council has said they
must be freed, so they're freed," he said.
Taliban representatives and the South Koreans met in the southern
town of Ghazni, 140 kilometres (90 miles) south of the capital
Kabul.
The hardline rebels abducted 23 Koreans on July 19. They later shot
dead two of the Christian aid workers and had threatened to murder
more if demands for the release of Taliban prisoners from jail were
not met.
Another Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahed, confirmed the
decision to free the women, saying their release would "show that
we're honest in our talks and expect the government to be honest
and free our prisoners".
The police chief of Ghazni, Alishah Ahmadzai, said earlier there
had been an agreement to free "some" of the hostages, but other
officials would not confirm this.
The two Taliban representatives who were party to the talks said
Saturday they were "optimistic" but reiterated their prisoner-swap
demand, a condition the government has repeatedly rejected.
"The hostages will be freed if the government accepts our demands
to free some prisoners," one of the negotiators, Qari Bashir, said
outside the offices of the Afghan Red Crescent Society where the
talks were held.
"If they accept our demands, maybe they'll be freed today or
tomorrow," he said at what amounted to the Taliban's first press
conference in several years.
The Taliban, who have been waging an insurgency since being toppled
from government in 2001, usually speak to reporters through
spokesmen who make telephone contact from undisclosed
locations.
With talks with the Afghan government apparently deadlocked over
the demand for a prisoner exchange, direct negotiations between the
rebels and the South Korean team have been seen as one of the last
hopes for the hostages' release.
The 23 South Korean aid workers were abducted in Ghazni province
while travelling on a key highway which many foreigners consider a
no-go area because of a general decline in security.
The Taliban are also linked to a militant group holding a German
engineer and four Afghans captured in Wardak province near Kabul
the day before the abduction of the South Koreans.
The militants have demanded a prisoner exchange for the 62-year-old
engineer, who was captured with another German who was shot dead
days later.
The hardliners were in government between 1996 and 2001, when they
were driven out by a US-led coalition for sheltering Al-Qaeda --
blamed for the 9/11 attacks that year. - AFP/ir/ls
