hankyoreh

On August 7, 20 days into the hostage crisis, the South Korean government is concentrating on preparing countermeasures in anticipation of face-to-face negotiations with the Taliban militia holding 21 South Korean citizens in captivity. Seoul thinks that face-to-face negotiations are the only resolution for the safe release of the kidnapped.

As U.S. President George Bush W. Bush and his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai reconfirmed that they are opposed to swapping hostages with Taliban prisoners and paying compensation in return for their release, the government is independently seeking ways to persuade the Taliban insurgents to free the hostages. The government reportedly is considering a plan to persuade the Taliban to cancel its demand for the release of prisoners by suggesting that it would withdraw the Dong-eui Medical Unit and Dasan Engineering Unit dispatched in Afghanistan earlier than scheduled. The two units are due to leave the country at the end of the year. The government’s efforts to hold face-to-face negotiations with the Taliban still face rough going because the two nations have different views on both the venue for the negotiation and the attendant security problem.

In the statement announced through the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) on August 7, purported Taliban spokesperson Qari Yousuf Ahmadi criticized the summit between George W. Bush and Hamid Karzai, saying that it had failed to produce practical results and adding that there was no change in their position that the Taliban prisoners should be freed. He threatened, “If our demands are not accepted, we will kill the hostages.”

During the summit which was held at the Camp David on Aug. 6, the two presidents agreed not to pay compensation in connection with negotiations for the release of the South Korean abductees, said Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the White House National Security Council. After the joint press conference, Johndroe warned the Taliban insurgents not to become bolder. After the summit, Bush attacked the Taliban militants calling them cold-blooded murderers who kill innocent people, while Karzai maintained that he would drive out the Taliban insurgents from their hideouts on the mountain and establish justice in Afghanistan.

In the meantime, Sen. Hillary Clinton, the U.S. Democratic Party’s leading presidential hopeful, prayed for safe release of the hostages and urged the U.S. administration, the Kabul government and the international community to work together for their return. Japan’s national broadcaster NHK, quoting an Afghan official, reported that all 200 soldiers from a special unit that was dispatched to Ghazni province on July 23 withdrew to Kabul in preparation for an operation to rescue the South Korean captives.