GHAZNI, Aug 10: Taliban militants met face-to-face with South Korean officials late on Friday to negotiate the release of 21 hostages held in Afghanistan since mid-July, the militia and Afghan officials said.

The meeting between the rebels and the South Koreans has been seen as one of the last hopes for the South Korean aid workers, 16 of whom are women, seized in turbulent southern Ghazni province on July 19.

The hardline insurgents have already shot dead two of their male hostages to pressure the government to release Taliban prisoners, and have threatened to kill the others if their demands are not met.

“At 6:15 pm today (1345 GMT) the face-to-face talks between the South Korea delegation and a two-member Taliban team started in the city of Ghazni,” Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi said.

“Our demands are the same and will not change,” he said, adding that the two Taliban representatives had travelled under a government guarantee of safe passage.

“As long as there are negotiations, the hostages will be safe with us,” Ahmadi said. But a Taliban commander involved in the crisis has reportedly warned that more hostages could die if talks with the South Koreans fail.

A senior Afghan security official said on condition of anonymity that the talks were ongoing late Friday in Ghazni, 140 kilometres south of the capital Kabul.

“The Afghan government is providing security for the talks and are present only as observers,” he said.

The International Committee for the Red Cross said it was involved in the process as an intermediary. However, the South Korean embassy in Kabul refused to confirm the talks had begun.

The spokesman for the Ghazni provincial government, Shirin Mangal, said the talks were being held in a regional office of the Red Cross under government security.

He would not say when they had started but said there was no particular outcome so far.

Kabul, backed by Washington, has steadfastly refused to agree to the Taliban demand for the release of jailed militants, and Seoul says it is powerless to bring about a prisoner release.

While publicly insisting they would only accept the release of certain male prisoners in Afghan jails, the Taliban said this week they might release some of the women hostages if Afghan women were released from US custody.

The US military in Afghanistan said it had no female prisoners.

Unconfirmed media reports said the South Koreans had offered the rebels a ransom payment, which the Islamist extremist group is reported to have accepted in previous negotiations for foreign hostages.—AFP