Wed, Jul 25, 2007 page5

• German captive seriously ill: Taliban

  CLOCK TICKING Afghan soldiers have surrounded the area where the rebel group is believed to be holed up as officials negotiate the release of 23 South Korean hostages

  • AFP
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  With the clock ticking toward a sundown deadline for the lives of their 23 South Korean hostages, the Taliban said yesterday that a German captive held in Afghanistan was very sick.

  The rebel group has called for both Berlin and Seoul to pull their troops out of the war-battered country and for the release of 33 insurgents held prisoner by Afghan authorities.

  A deadline set by the Taliban, after which they say they will start killing the South Koreans, expires at 2:30pm GMT. The rebels, remnants of the hardline regime toppled by US-led troops in 2001, have already extended it twice.

  

  A relative of one of the 23 South Koreans kidnapped in Afghanistan cries after watching TV news reports of negotiations in Seoul on Monday.

  PHOTO: AP

  The bullet-riddled body of one of two German hostages seized separately from the Koreans last week was found on a road on Sunday, and Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi said the second was now drifting in and out of consciousness.

  "The German is very badly sick. He has got diabetes," Ahmadi said by telephone from an unknown location.

  It was impossible to verify the claim independently.

  "Most of the time he's unconscious and we have to carry him on a stretcher from one place to another," Ahmadi said.

  He said a deadline on the fate of the German had yet to be decided by Taliban commanders.

  Government troops have surrounded the area where the insurgents are believed to be holed up, as Afghan officials have sought to negotiate the release of the largest group of foreign hostages held in the country since 2001.

  The Taliban have demanded direct negotiations with a South Korean crisis team that flew into Kabul on Sunday. Seoul has stressed that it will pull out its 200 soldiers serving with a US-led coalition by year's end as planned.

  But a police commander involved in the talks said they were faltering.

  "The problem is that the Taliban have conflicting demands -- they change or add to their demands every time," said Alishah Ahmadzai, police chief of the southern province of Ghanzi where the Koreans are being held.

  He added that they would keepe"negotiating with the abductors to come to common ground to win their release."

  Interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary said that authorities were using "different methods and tactics" to secure the release of the hostages, but would not give details, citing security reasons.

  In Seoul, President Roh Moo-hyun urged South Koreans to remain calm after the group of young and mainly female Christian aid workers spent a fifth night in captivity.

  "I would appreciate if the government, families, those concerned and the public all take a calm and cool-headed attitude in handling this problem," Roh told a Cabinet meeting, according to his office.

  "It is not time to be either recklessly optimistic or pessimistic beforehand about the results" of the talks, Roh said.

  German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said "it is our mission" to save the country's second hostage but warned that Berlin would "not accept blackmail" from the insurgents, warning that this would be dangerous.

  The Taliban have been battling US and NATO-led forces since their 2001 ouster, increasingly using Iraq-style tactics such as kidnappings, remotely triggered roadside bombs and suicide attacks.
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