Korean Envoy in Kabul for Hostage Release Talks Taliban Demands Prisoner Exchange

A special envoy from President Roh Moo Hyun of South Korea met with the Afghan president Sunday to discuss the captivity of 22 Korean aid workers held hostage by the Taliban, while the militants reportedly refused further discussion unless their demands for the release of Taliban prisoners were met. Baek Jong Chun, Roh’s national security adviser, met President Hamid Karzai in Kabul, a spokesman for Roh said. The spokesman, Chun Ho Sun, declined to reveal details of the talks.

The meeting came as the Taliban said it had given the Afghan government a list of 23 prisoners it wanted released in exchange for the South Korean hostages.

Reuters quoted Qari Yousef Ahmadi, a purported Taliban spokesman, as saying: “There is no need for further talks. We have given the government a list of Taliban prisoners who should be released and that is our main demand.”

An Afghan team that was supposed to have held talks with the Taliban on Saturday could not reach the group because of security concerns in Ghazni Province, where the South Korean hostages were kidnapped on July 19, Reuters reported, citing unnamed provincial sources.

Meanwhile, two days of meetings between elders of Qarabagh district in Ghazni and a delegation of senior officials from Kabul have yielded no results, Shirin Mangal, a spokesman for the Ghazni provincial governor, told The Associated Press.

Two Afghan lawmakers, including a former Taliban commander, Abdul Salaam Rocketi, joined the negotiations Saturday. But Ahmadi complained that the Afghan delegation “doesn’t have the power to release prisoners,” The Associated Press reported.

The group of 23 Christian aid workers from South Korea were kidnapped while traveling by bus from Kabul to the southern city of Kandahar. The bullet-riddled body of the group’s leader, a 42-year- old Protestant pastor named Bae Hyung Kyu, was found Wednesday.

The 22 other hostages, including 18 women, are being held.

The Taliban wants the South Korean envoy to persuade Kabul to swap the hostages for the Taliban prisoners.

“If they don’t release the Taliban prisoners, then the Taliban does not have any option other than to kill the Korean hostages,” Ahmadi was quoted as saying by The Associated Press.

Ahmadi also told The AP that the hostages were being held in small groups in different locations and that some of them were in poor health.

As relatives in South Korea issued their daily appeal to the Afghan militants to release the hostages, one of the female captives, identified by relatives as a 39-year-old English interpreter, Yu Jeong Hwa, talked to Reuters on Saturday in a brief cellphone conversation arranged by the Taliban.

She pleaded for the United Nations and the United States and Korean governments to help release them.

On Wednesday, the Taliban allowed another hostage, a nurse named Im Hyun Ju, to talk to the U.S. broadcaster CBS. Im also appealed for international help for the release of the hostages.

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