Afghan elders yesterday negotiated with the Taliban to win the release of 22 kidnapped South Koreans as the latest militant deadline passed without word on their fate or news of progress.
A South Korean presidential envoy was scheduled to arrive yesterday for talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and other top officials on the crisis.
No breakthrough came in a round of telephone calls late into Thursday night that resumed yesterday, officials said.
PHOTO: EPA
Negotiators were struggling with conflicting demands made by the kidnappers, including the release of Taliban prisoners and ransom money.
"We hope we will have a good result, but I don't know if they will be released today. I don't think they will be," Shirin Mangal, a spokesman for the governor of Ghazni Province where the captives were taken, said yesterday.
A noon deadline -- the latest of several ultimatums given by the captors -- came and went without fresh word of the hostages' fate. Calls to a Taliban spokesman went unanswered.
Previous deadlines have passed without incident.
In Seoul, a South Korean Foreign Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the matter's sensitivity, said the captives were still believed to be safe and that officials were trying to get medicine and other items delivered to them.
Baek Jong-chun, a senior South Korean official, was expected to meet Karzai and other officials to discuss specific measures to free the hostages, the official said.
Tribal elders and clerics who are respected by the people of the Qarabagh district where the Koreans were taken have been conducting negotiations by telephone with the captors for several days.
"There are still a lot of problems among them," Qarabagh police chief Khwaja Mohammad Sidiqi said.
"One says, `Let's exchange them for my relative,' the others say, `Let's release the women,' and yet another wants a deal for money," he said.
Qari Yousef Ahmadi, a Taliban spokesman, on Thursday reiterated a demand for the release of Taliban prisoners and a threat to kill more of the hostages.
One of the group of abducted South Koreans, 42-year-old pastor Bae Hyung-kyu, was found slain with multiple gunshots on Wednesday in Qarabagh.
"If Kabul administration does not solve our problem ... then we do not have any option but to kill Korean hostages," Ahmadi said.
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