No hostage deal that would encourage more kidnappings: Karzai

UNITED STATES: Afghan President Hamid Karzai said in an interview broadcast Sunday that he would do everything to help free 21 South Korean missionaries short of actions that would encourage more hostage-taking.

Asked in an interview with CNN whether he would negotiate with the Taliban kidnappers to secure the release of the Koreans, Karzai said: "We will try everything to have them released safely and in security.

"We will do everything other than encouraging hostage-taking and terrorism to have them released," he added.

Afghan negotiators on Saturday repeated that they had ruled out a prisoner exchange, and said any deal to free the group would have to involve a ransom payout. Karzai said he is talking with his government's officials on the case "on an hourly basis."

"These terrorists, as you know, mostly of foreign origin, foreign backing. But since the hostage-taking took place in Afghanistan, it brings us a bad name," Karzai said.

Meanwhile South Korean officials have made their first contact with one of the 21 hostages kidnapped by Taliban insurgents more than two weeks ago, an official in Seoul said on Monday, but there have been no signs of progress.

"There was a telephone conversation with one hostage Saturday afternoon," said a South Korean official on condition of anonymity. The official declined to give further details, citing a potential risk to the safety of the hostages in Afghanistan.

Yonhap news agency said it had made contact with two women hostages through a source in Afghanistan over the weekend. The hostages spoke briefly by telephone. In one call, the captive said the hostages had been separated into several groups and two Koreans were seriously ill.

In the other, the captive said: "We are all sick and want to meet our families again at home...the Taliban point guns at us and threaten to kill us if the Korean government 7does not accept their demands," Yonhap reported. Earlier Taliban militants again threatened to kill more of their 21 South Korean hostages, as Seoul said it hoped the Afghan and US presidents could help secure their release.

The fresh threat from the hardline Islamists - the first since Wednesday, when their last deadline expired - came as Karzai prepared to meet his US counterpart George W. Bush at Camp David. Earlier, a South Korean official said he hoped the two leaders could break the apparent deadlock in negotiations for the release of the 21 aid workers, who were abducted in volatile southern Ghazni province on July 19.

Washington, Seoul, Monday, AFP, Reuters