KABUL (AFP) - Militants threatening to kill three UN workers held hostage in Afghanistan set a fresh deadline for their demands to be met and blamed the United States for slowing up negotiations.
Jaishul Muslimeen (Army of Muslims), which seized the three foreign workers on October 28, said the Afghan government had until Monday to meet its demands.
"We have extended the deadline," said Sayed Khaled, who claims to speak for the group which has set and broken a series of deadlines.
"If they did not act on what they had promised and if they did not meet our demands then our shura (tribal council) will make the final decision Monday evening."
Khaled, speaking by telephone from an unknown location, blamed comments by US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage for hindering negotiations.
The group has handed over a list of 26 prisoners it wants to swap for the hostages and was in talks with the Afghan government earlier this week.
Khaled said the government had been able to locate 18 of the 26 prisoners on the list and was searching for the remaining eight when comments by Armitage stalled the process.
On a visit to Afghanistan Wednesday, Armitage said the United States believed negotiating with hostage-takers would only encourage more kidnappings.
"The talks were going on and there was good enough development to release our prisoners," Khaled said.
"Armitage slowed down the process. We call on UN if they are an independent organization and if the Afghan government is independent then they should act on their own initiatives, not on instructions by Armitage. Otherwise it is they who will lose, not us," he added.
There had been hopes that the hostages would be freed Saturday, on the eve of the three-day Eid al-Fitr holiday, which marks the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.
Khaled also repeated the threat to kill the three hostages if the kidnappers' demands were not met.
"Our prisoners will be finally released if not now in months' time or in years but it will be their workers who will lose their lives. They should remember that it is the question (of) three people's lives," he said.
Annetta Flanigan from Northern Ireland, Shqipe Habibi from Kosovo, and Angelito Nayan, a diplomat from the Philippines, were snatched from their vehicle in busy lunchtime traffic in Kabul on October 28.
They had been overseeing the war-battered country's first-ever presidential election, won by US-backed incumbent Hamid Karzai.
The kidnapping has cast a pall over what was widely seen as a successful election without the widely feared bloodshed despite threats by the Taliban.
United Nations staff are under tight security in the capital following the kidnappings with a curfew, limited travel in the capital and escorts for UN personnel.
Foreigners in the capital have curtailed their movements, leaving almost empty restaurants and areas such as Chicken Street which was the site of a suicide bombing last month that killed one person. Life for most Afghans however continues as normal.
Ordinary Afghans have condemned the hostage-taking as contrary to Afghan and Muslim traditions of hospitality with 20 Afghan women offering Thursday to swap places with the UN hostages.
11/14/2004 - 13:46 GMT - AFP