GHAZNI, Afghanistan, 23 August 2007 — Taleban militants who have been holding 19 South Koreans for more than a month renewed a threat yesterday to kill them if their demands are not met.

A purported rebel spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said some of the captives were sick and they were also suffering from lack of proper food.

“If the demands of the Taleban are not met the Korean hostages face death,” Mujahid told AFP in a telephone call from an unknown location.

“Although we want this crisis to be solved through negotiations, it seems the US authorities are creating problems.” He did not, however, set any deadline and it was impossible to verify his comments independently.

The Korean aid workers were seized while traveling in insurgency-plagued southern Afghanistan on July 19, a day after a German engineer was kidnapped nearby. The militant group has demanded the release of some of its jailed fighters in exchange for the hostages — a demand the US-backed government in Kabul has so far rejected.

Mujahid said weather conditions and lack of “proper food” in the southern Ghazni province meant life for the hostages was increasingly harsh. “Their health condition is not good. The weather conditions and a lack of proper food have made conditions for them very hard. Most of them are sick.” Negotiations between Taleban captors and a South Korean delegation to free the captives have failed.

Mujahid, however, said telephone contacts between he two sides were continuing. “We’ve been in phone contact with the Korean delegation. So far, there has not been any decision for face-to-face talks,” he said.

A South Korean Embassy official here, under cover of anonymity, confirmed contact was being maintained. The spokesman said the Taleban wanted 10 of its prisoners freed in exchange for the German engineer, who was also sick, and four Afghan colleagues.

The kidnappings are among a series of incidents blamed on the Taleban, who are waging a bloody insurgency against the Kabul government and its coalition allies that has spiraled in intensity over the past year.

A female German aid worker was kidnapped in the capital at the weekend, but she was later freed in a police raid and authorities said her abduction was a criminal act motivated by money.

Meanwhile, a top Taleban commander said Al-Qaeda mastermind Osama Bin Laden is alive and well, according to US-based analysts monitoring extremist publications. “All praise be to Allah, he is extremely healthy and active,” the commander Mansour Dadullah said in a video interview, according to a transcript of the video’s English subtitled translation, released Tuesday by the analyst IntelCenter.

Dadullah, whose brother Mullah Dadullah was also a top commander in the Afghanistan-based militants and was killed this year, said Bin Laden had contacted him, the man blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

“I received a message from him in which he advised me I must follow Mullah Dadullah and continue the same activities so that the mujahedeen (Islamic fighters) may not weaken,” he said, according to the transcript. The video is dated June 15, 2007, IntelCenter said.

After the attacks the United States led an invasion of Afghanistan to oust the Taleban regime allied with Al-Qaeda and believed Bin Laden was hiding there. But after pounding the mountains where his den was thought to be, US-led forces failed to find him.

In the recording, which was accompanied by an online text, the terror network chief said Zacarias Moussaoui, a 37-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan origin and the only man convicted in the 9/11 attacks, had nothing to do with the operation.

The recording surfaced on May 23, 2006, about two weeks after Moussaoui was sentenced at a court in Alexandria, Virginia to life imprisonment.