GHAZNI (Afghanistan), Aug 4: The governor of the Afghan province where the Taliban took 23 South Koreans hostage accused Pakistani Taliban working with Pakistani intelligence agents of holding them captive.

“In the beginning it was the local Taliban, but after a few days, Pakistani Taliban and ISI officers disguised as Taliban arrived in the region and they took control of the situation,” Ghazni Governor Merajuddin Pattan told Reuters on Saturday.

Afghan officials often accuse Pakistan’s Inter Service Intelligence of secretly supporting and harbouring Taliban insurgents. Pakistan strongly denies the charge.

Pakistani officials were not immediately available for comment on Pattan’s accusation, which could spark another downturn in relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai is due in the United States on Sunday and Monday for talks with President George W. Bush.

The Taliban seized 23 South Korean church volunteers from a bus in Ghazni on July 20. The kidnappers have shot dead two male hostages after Kabul refused to give in to their demand and free Taliban prisoners.

Pattan, a soft-spoken US-educated economist, has been closely involved in talks between the Taliban kidnappers and an Afghan negotiating team sent from Kabul.

He said that during one telephone conversation, he had heard one of the kidnappers translating from Pashto, the language used by Pakhtun Taliban, to Urdu.

He also noted that the kidnappers had stopped setting deadlines since South Korean presidential envoy Baek Jong-chun travelled to Islamabad on Thursday to ask the Pakistan government and religious parties’ leaders such as Fazlur Rehman to use their influence to obtain the hostages’ release.

“I spoke to the Korean diplomats and I told them that if you want this problem to be ended very soon, please put pressure on Pakistan’s foreign ministry, they will put pressure on the ISI,” Pattan said.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called President Pervez Musharraf this week, asking for help to free the hostages. Ban “was told that Pakistan had no links with the Taliban, no contacts,” a spokesman for Musharraf said.

Pattan accused the ISI of trying to show Afghanistan was weak and use the hostage crisis to overshadow a peace meeting, or jirga, between Afghan and Pakistani tribal elders next week that aims to find common ways to combat the Taliban and Al Qaeda.—Reuters