Taliban, South Korea Reaches Deal to Free Hostages

Published on 28 August 2007 in Hostage Taking
Source: LA Times

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN -- The Taliban and the South Korean government said today that they had struck a deal to release 19 Christian aid workers kidnapped five weeks ago, though neither side gave any details on how and when the hostages would be freed.

"We have reached an agreement with the Koreans," Qari Mohammed Basher, a Taliban representative, said in a phone interview after emerging from talks with a delegation of South Korean diplomats in Afghanistan's Ghazni province. "We asked for some conditions and the Korean delegation accepted our demands."

A spokesman for South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun confirmed that an agreement had been reached. But it was unclear whether his government had made any concessions to win the hostages' release.

Basher said the Taliban had insisted that South Korea withdraw its military forces from Afghanistan by the end of the year, and that it secured a pledge that South Korean church groups would halt any missionary work in the country.

But South Korea announced last year that it would pull out its 200 noncombat troops, most of them engineers and medical staff, by the end of 2007. And the government in Seoul has also clamped down on missionaries seeking to travel to countries where their presence is seen as an irritant. READ MORE