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.