Taliban to start releasing Koreans today

Kabul, Aug 29: Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan will free as many as eight of the 19 South Korean Christian volunteers they kidnapped nearly six weeks ago, a representative of the group said.

''Our decision is today,'' said Qari Mohammad Bashir, who was involved in the release talks with a South Korean team. ''We are trying to start the work today.'' Bashir separately told the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press news agency: ''Today we'll release a batch of five to eight people ... God willing, they'll be released by this afternoon.'' He said he hoped all would be freed in the next two to three days.

A spokesman for South Korea's president would not comment on the reports, saying the government did not want to add any risk to the handover by releasing details of the process.

Spokesman Chon Ho-seon did not respond to questions at a news briefing on whether a ransom was part of the deal but said South Korea had done what was needed.

''We believe it is any country's responsibility to respond with flexibility to save lives as long as you don't depart too far from the principles and practice of the international community,'' Chon said.

Missionary Zeal

South Korean missionary groups said today they would pull out of Afghanistan to comply with a deal Seoul struck with the Taliban that calls on Seoul to pull out its troops and stop Korean missionary work in Afghanistan by the end of this year.

South Korea had already decided before the crisis to withdraw its contingent of about 200 engineers and medical staff from Afghanistan by the end of 2007. And since the hostages were taken it has banned its nationals from travelling there.

The 23 volunteers sent to Afghanistan by the Saemmul Church were seized on July 19 from a bus in Ghazni province. The insurgents killed two male hostages early on in the crisis, but released two women as a gesture of goodwill during a first round of negotiations.

South Korea's churches said the kidnapping had led evangelical groups to rethink their mistosionary zeal.

The National Council of Churches in Korea, one of the largest groups representing the country's Protestants, said in a statement it would abide by the government's pledge to end missionary work in Afghanistan.

''Through this incident, we will look back on the Korean churches' overseas volunteer and missionary work, and make this an opportunity to bring about more effective and safer volunteer and missionary work,'' it said.

There are an estimated 17,000 South Korean Christian missionaries abroad, the largest contingent after those from the United States, many of them in volatile regions.

For many increasingly wealthy evangelical churches in the country, dispatching Christian volunteers abroad has turned into a competition among churches, with larger numbers considered a gauge of the strength of their faith.

Internet discussion pages, a hotbed for public debate in the world's most-wired country, were filled with comments welcoming the return but also many with stinging criticism of Saemmul Church and the volunteers for ignoring obvious risks.

A minister who has been critical of what he sees as South Korean churches' indiscriminate push to spread the gospel said he doubted whether the hostage crisis would lead to change.

''South Korean churches must switch to missionary work of common sense, not missionary work of zeal,'' said Hwang Kyu-hak.

REUTERS
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