S. Korean hostage in Iraq wins more time
S. Korean hostage in Iraq wins more time
Mussab al-Khairalla, Reuters/Baghdad
Militants threatening to behead a South Korean hostage in Iraq unless Seoul withdraws its troops have agreed to allow more time for talks on his fate, an Iraqi mediator told Reuters on Tuesday.
Jama'at al-Tawhid and Jihad, suspected of links to al-Qaeda, initially set a Monday night deadline in a videotape which showed Kim Sun-il pleading for his life.
But Mohammed al-Obeidi, an Iraqi working for South Korean security firm NKTS in Baghdad, said Iraqi clerics who were in talks with Kim's captors had told him the deadline had been extended.
Seoul has rejected the militants' demands to pull troops out of Iraq and scrap plans to send more.
"The kidnappers have said they are willing to negotiate as long as the Korean government stops making provocative remarks and softens its tone on troop deployment," Obeidi said.
A member of parliament for South Korea's ruling party said clerics involved in the talks had confirmed Kim, 33, was still alive.
"Those clerics, who also had helped release Japanese hostages earlier, told me in telephone talks this morning and an email this evening they saw Kim Sun-il this morning in Baghdad," Kim Seung-gon told Reuters.
The U.S.-led occupation authority vowed to do all it could to rescue Kim, an Arabic speaker and evangelical Christian who has worked in Iraq for a year as a translator for a Korean firm supplying goods to the U.S. army.
He was seized on June 17 in Falluja, a flashpoint city in the anti-U.S. insurgency 50 km west of Baghdad.
"We have been asking for cooperation and received information through various channels," Seoul's chief foreign ministry spokesman said.
A Seoul commerce ministry spokeswoman said all South Koreans working for firms in Iraq were likely to leave the country by early next month.
Jama'at al-Tawhid and Jihad is led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who is suspected by Washington of being al-Qaeda's main operative in Iraq and has been linked to a string of bomb attacks and assassinations.
Since early April, dozens of foreign hostages have been seized in Iraq, many around Falluja. Most have been freed but at least three have been killed by their captors, including U.S. entrepreneur Nicholas Berg who was beheaded by Zarqawi's group. U.S. officials say Zarqawi himself wielded the knife.
In another test for U.S.-led authorities, Iran seized three British naval boats and arrested eight British crew, saying they had entered its waters near the Iraqi border.
A British Defense Ministry spokesman said the crew had been helping to train Iraqi police.
Iranian state television said Tehran would prosecute the British sailors, a move likely to fan a minor border incident into a diplomatic crisis. The British government immediately demanded an explanation from Tehran.
Iran opposed the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq, but there has been little direct conflict up to now between the Islamic Republic and U.S.-led forces along its western border.
In Iraq, U.S. and Iraqi officials say insurgents are stepping up a campaign of assassinations, bomb attacks and economic sabotage to try to disrupt the formal handover of sovereignty to an Iraqi interim government on June 30.
In the northern city of Mosul, a university dean and her husband were found murdered on Tuesday in the latest in a series of killings of high-profile figures.
In Baghdad, a car bomb blast killed two Iraqis.
Sabotage last week halted all oil exports, but officials said they resumed on Monday after repairs to one of two pipelines blown up in southern Iraq. The sabotage had choked about 1.6 million barrels of daily exports from Gulf terminals.
One controversy surrounding the June 30 handover is what will happen to Saddam Hussein and other high-profile Iraqi detainees in U.S. custody.
A senior coalition official said on Tuesday the United States plans to turn over legal, but not physical, custody of Saddam and some other prisoners to the Iraqi interim government at its request soon after the handover.
"Because the Iraqi interim government is not currently in a position to safeguard these detainees, at least in large numbers, our current plan calls for the transfer of legal responsibility over a certain number of high-profile detainees...while physical custody will remain with the multinational force in Iraq," the official told reporters.