ISLAMABAD: Taleban militants freed a Chinese telecommunications engineer after holding him captive for more than five months, a spokesman for the militants and Chinese officials said yesterday.
Long Xiaowei has been freed as a “goodwill gesture” to the Chinese people, said Muslim Khan, a spokesman for the militants in the northwestern Swat Valley. “He has been released. He's fine,” Khan said.
Security has deteriorated sharply in Pakistan since August, with troops battling militants in various parts of the northwest as well as along the border with Afghanistan.
Underscoring the poor security situation, President Asif Ali Zardari told CBS in an interview that the Taleban group had established itself across a large part of Pakistan, forcing the country to fight a war that was about its own survival.
The Chinese engineer was seized along with another Chinese colleague and a Pakistani driver and a guard near the Afghan border in August while returning to a guest house after working on a telecommunications tower.
Security forces recovered Long’s colleague and the two Pakistanis seven weeks later after they escaped from their captors when they were being shifted to a mountain hide-out.
The Chinese Embassy in Islamabad said in a statement that Long had arrived at the mission and would go home soon. The embassy would step up efforts to protect Chinese nationals in Pakistan, China's official Xinhua news agency said.
Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon telephoned Zardari late on Saturday urging the speedy release of a kidnapped American from the UN refugee agency in southwestern Pakistan, the president’s office said in a statement.
John Solecki, head of the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Quetta, capital of southwestern Balochistan province, was kidnapped on Feb. 2 after gunmen ambushed his car and shot dead his driver. Zardari told Ban the government was focused on finding Solecki.
Balochistan Chief Minister Mohammad Aslam Raisani told reporters in Quetta yesterday that he expected a “breakthrough” soon.
“Today we launched an operation in Chagai. Some suspects were arrested and hopefully we would get him freed safely,” he said, referring to a district near the Afghan border.
The kidnappers said in a hand-written letter on Friday they would kill Solecki if the government failed to release its activists from jail within 72 hours. The captors have demanded the release of 141 women allegedly held in Pakistan. Pakistan’s Interior Ministry chief Rehman Malik has said the abductors’ demand was “highly unrealistic.”
Balochistan provincial government spokesman Syed Kamran said yesterday it’s offering a $31,363 reward “for any information leading to the recovery of the kidnapped UN official.”
In another development, militants announced a 10-day cease-fire starting from yesterday in Swat. “We’re announcing cease-fire as goodwill gesture to the ongoing talks between Maulana Sufi Mohammad and government,” said Muslim Khan.
A full-blown revolt erupted in Swat in late 2007, and the militants control the alpine valley, formerly one of Pakistan’s most popular tourist destinations.
A government official later said a peace deal could be signed today.
The government of North West Frontier Province (NWFP) held talks with Sufi Mohammad, on the enforcement of Shariah law in Swat and Malakand districts, provincial Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain told AFP. “The talks were very positive and the people of Swat will hear good news soon,” he said.
Sufi Mohammad, whose son-in-law, Maulana Fazlullah is waging a campaign for the enforcement of Shariah in the region, said talks on a draft agreement had been successful and an agreement could be signed today. “We had been holding negotiations with the government on a 22-point charter of demands for quite some time. There were differences on five points which have been removed in a meeting,” said Mohammad, who is founder of the Shariah movement.
— With input from agencies
