August 20, 2007	Monday	Sha’aban 6, 1428

KABUL, Aug 19: Afghan authorities hunted on Sunday for a German aid worker kidnapped by a suspected criminal gang in broad daylight in Kabul, as negotiations to free 19 South Koreans held by Taliban militants faltered.

Security forces were concentrating the search for the kidnapped woman in an area of the capital close to where she was abducted at gunpoint on Saturday, the interior ministry said.

“Police are still searching for the kidnappers. The suspected area has been cordoned off and we are searching for them,” ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary told AFP.

He said authorities believed that a criminal gang was behind the abduction — the latest in a string of Iraq-style kidnappings blamed mostly on the Taliban — rather than insurgents. “We suspect they might be criminals and not the Taliban,” Bashary said of the kidnappers.

“We are working on the case and have covered all the suspected area.” Bashary would not give details but an AFP reporter driving through the Kart-i-Seh area of Kabul observed a heavy police presence.

“We’re here to search vehicles coming or going through these roads,” said a police officer at a roadblock close to the main office of the kidnapped woman’s aid agency, Orphan, Refugee and Aid International (ORA).

The organisation has not been contacted by the kidnappers, the source said.

Bashary declined to say if the kidnappers had contacted the authorities with a ransom demand. “We will arrest the criminals and not negotiate,” he said, without elaborating for fear of compromising the search operation.

A colleague of the woman at ORA said she had been living in Kabul for six months and working as a development officer.

A Western diplomat close to the investigation told AFP the authorities were hopeful of a successful outcome “very soon.”

Meanwhile, hopes of a negotiated solution to the month-long ordeal of 19 South Koreans kidnapped in restive southern Afghanistan appeared to fade on Sunday with no new talks scheduled between their Taliban abductors and South Korean officials.

A spokesman for the militia said on Saturday that more than a week of direct talks had failed, and Taliban leaders were to decide the hostages’ fate.

“The negotiations have failed. The Taliban leading council is making its decision now on the fate of the hostages,” the spokesman, Yousuf Ahmadi, told AFP on Saturday.

Ahmadi later denied South Korean media reports that the Taliban had set a new deadline. “There has not been anything new, we’ve not spoken about any deadline. The talks have failed and the leadership council will decide the fate of the hostages,” he said.

Asked when a decision would be taken by the Taliban leadership, he said: “In the future, but I don’t know the exact time.”

Face-to-face talks between Taliban negotiators and a South Korean delegation in Ghazni, the capital of the province where 23 Korean Christian aid workers were abducted on July 19, ended on Thursday with no result.—AFP