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GHAZNI, Afghanistan - A purported South Korean hostage made an emotional plea for help in a telephone call with AFP on Saturday as a negotiator again ruled out freeing Taliban prisoners in exchange for the 21 captives.
The woman, who said she was being held with three others in the church aid group captured more than two weeks ago, said the captives were ill and finding it hard to survive.
"I don't want to die. We want to go home," she said in English in a call set up by Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi. "I don't know how long we can survive," she said.
One of her purported captors telephoned an AFP journalist from an unknown location and then handed the phone to the woman, who introduced herself with a Korean name that was not recognised.
There was no immediate way of verifying that she was one of 23 South Korean church aid workers kidnapped in the southern province of Ghazni on July 19.
"Every day it's really hard to survive. We really want to go home, we are all sick and weak," she said.
"Please save us... we are all innocent people, we came here to help sick people but now we are all sick."
She appeared to ask that no military operation be conducted to free the group, saying, "please no war, if there is a war we will be really in danger."
Speaking in Afghanistan's Dari language earlier, the woman said the group had been split up. "I don't know about the others, if they're alive," she said.
Their captors "threaten us, they tell us they'll kill us," she said. "It's difficult, they're very dangerous."
The Taliban has shot dead two hostages, both men, since the group was seized. They have warned that more captives would be killed unless some of their fighters are released from jail, a demand the government has rejected.
The woman pleaded with the South Korean and Afghan governments, UN chief Ban Ki-moon and Pope Benedict XVI to help win the release of the aid mission.
The militants said after their latest deadline expired Wednesday they had not killed any more hostages because they were hoping for results from talks with the South Koreans.
Ahmadi said a Taliban delegation was ready to meet South Korean representatives face to face, in another country if necessary, as long as the United Nations guaranteed the "safe return" of the negotiators.
The UN in Afghanistan said it had not received a direct request on this.
An Afghan negotiator again ruled out Saturday an exchange of Taliban prisoners to free the 21 South Koreans.
Negotiations over the church aid workers were now being conducted mainly by a South Korean delegation, said Mahmood Gailani, a member of the negotiating team who last week described the Afghan side's talks with Taliban as "stuck."
"They can only talk about money, ransom," he told AFP. "Not only the Americans are opposed to an exchange of prisoners, it's against the policy of the government."
The United States was the leading critic of a prisoner exchange in March that freed an Italian hostage but put top Taliban back in the fight against the government and its international allies, who have about 50,000 soldiers here.
President Hamid Karzai vowed then such a deal would never be repeated.
A 62-year-old German engineer who was captured a day before the South Koreans is being still held, along with four Afghans, by militants who are believed to be closely linked to the Taliban.
He was seized with another German who collapsed days later and was then shot dead.
- AFP /ls
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