KABUL (AFP) - A breakaway Taliban group claiming to hold three UN workers threatened to execute them unless foreign troops withdraw from Afghanistan and condemn its "invasion" by US-led forces.
"Our demand is the invader countries that these people belong to should withdraw their troops from Afghanistan and rethink their policies towards Afghanistan," Mullah Mohammad Ishaq, a spokesman for the Jaishul-Muslimeen (Army of Muslims), told AFP by phone.
The abducted UN workers are a British-Irish woman, a Filipino man and a woman from Kosovo, a province of southern Serbia.
When it was pointed out to Ishaq that neither Serbia or the Philippines had troops in Afghanistan, he replied: "Their countries should condemn the invasion by other countries of Afghanistan.
"If they don't do so, we will kill the hostages."
The first proof that the extremists were holding the trio came Saturday when they issued the British-Irish woman's credit card number to AFP and other media organisations.
A Western official close to the investigation confirmed the card belonged to the woman, Annetta Flanigan.
Jaishul-Muslimeen's anger stems from the US-led military invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 that toppled the hardline Islamic Taliban regime.
The Taliban were ousted for refusing to hand over Osama bin Laden, head of the Al-Qaeda network responsible for the September 11 terror attacks on the United States.
An 18,000-strong military coalition, dominated by 16,000 US troops, is still in Afghanistan hunting Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters.
Another 9,000 peacekeepers from around 30 countries are patrolling mainly in Kabul as part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
Neither the US-led coalition nor the peacekeeping force have any troops from Serbia or the Philippines, spokesmen for both forces told AFP.
Britain contributes troops to both forces.
The three UN employees had been overseeing Afghanistan's first presidential election and were nearing the end of their work when they were kidnapped at gunpoint Thursday from their car in front of a UN office in Kabul.
Jaishul-Muslimeen is a newly emerged splinter group of the Taliban movement, which ruled most of Afghanistan for five years until their ouster.
Ishaq, however, distanced his group from the Taliban, saying its members included former Taliban fighters and shared their ideology, but were not led by the Taliban's fugitive supreme commander, Mullah Omar.
He said the hostages were safe but refused to reveal their location.
Afghan forces are focusing their hunt on the Paghman valley, a known lair of kidnappers and bandits west of Kabul.
"The focus is still Paghman. The operation is ongoing, but there are no signs of success so far," General Abdul Jalil, head of the police counter criminal department, told AFP.
Interior ministry spokesman Lutfullah Mashal said the hunt had narrowed to Zarshakh, a sub-valley within Paghman.
Some troops had also been deployed to Arghandi, west of Zarshakh, a police intelligence official told AFP, requesting anonymity.
Hundreds of Afghan police from a newly-trained commando unit are leading the search.
The captors have threatened to kill the hostages if force is used to rescue them.
"If they use force, we will also use force ... we will kill the hostages," he said.
Ishaq said he was speaking by cellphone from inside Afghanistan but would not reveal his location.
The captors wanted a "rethink of UN and (Afghan) government policies towards the Taliban", Ishaq said on Friday, without elaborating.
Incumbent leader Hamid Karzai, who is still waiting for his landslide election victory to be certified, has condemned the abduction as a "criminal act ... aimed at derailing the process of peace."
Foreign Minister Abullah Abdullah on Saturday described the abduction as a cowardly act "perpetrated by the terrorists and the enemies of Afghanistan."
Ishaq said the abductors had originally targeted 25 election workers for helping "the fake elections in our Islamic country to support the infidels' puppet (US-backed Karzai) to fool the people of Afghanistan".
10/30/2004 - 17:34 GMT - AFP