WASHINGTON, 3 August 2007 — The United States is not ruling out the use of military force to free 21 South Korean hostages held by the Taleban in Afghanistan, a senior State Department official said yesterday.
“All pressures need to be applied to the Taleban to get them to release these hostages,” said Richard Boucher, assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia. “We hope that pressure can be effective in a variety of ways, the goal is to get these people released unharmed, to get them released peacefully and safely.”
“We will all make efforts together to try to encourage that,” he told reporters at the State Department, referring to close cooperation between the governments of the United States, Afghanistan and South Korea to win the hostages’ release. He declined to elaborate on what pressure or efforts were now being used to convince the Taleban to let the South Koreans go but said they included the option of military force. “There are things that we say, things that others say, things that are done and said within Afghan society as well as potential military pressures,” Boucher said.
The US announcement came as officials searched for a neutral meeting place in Afghanistan that would be safe for both South Korean negotiators and Taleban captors to hold face-to-face talks about the release of the hostages.
Lawmakers from Seoul, meanwhile, left for Washington in the latest diplomatic effort to urge the United States to help end the 15-day crisis.
Afghan officials said Taleban captors have agreed to meet with South Korea’s ambassador, but they had not yet agreed on a venue. “If the Taleban want to come to the area where we are for the sake of these hostages, 100 percent, they will be safe,” Ghazni Gov. Marajudin Pathan told a news conference. But both sides have proposed places that could put them at risk — including the office of the provincial reconstruction team, which is run by international troops.
Purported Taleban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi said the South Koreans had not requested direct talks with the militants, but the insurgents would be willing to hold such a meeting in Taleban-controlled territory.
The Taleban “want to negotiate directly with the Koreans because the Kabul administration is not sincere about releasing the Taleban prisoners,” Ahmadi said. He said the remaining 21 hostages were still alive, but two of the women were very sick and could die from illness.
In Berlin, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said that a German hostage in Afghanistan who suffered circulatory failure and was then shot dead by his captors was “brutally killed.” “This is deeply shocking. This crime must not go unpunished,” the minister said.
The 44-year-old construction engineer was one of two Germans kidnapped July 18 and his body was found on July 22.
The results of a post-mortem carried out in the German city of Cologne were released yesterday. “As a result of the strain of the situation he was in during the kidnapping he suffered a collapse of his circulation,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Jaeger said.
“This collapse alone did not lead to the death of the hostage. The victim, still alive, was then shot twice after collapsing. Once he had died, four more shots were fired at the victim,” Jaeger said.
