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Technorati"We shouldn't encourage kidnapping by actually accepting their demands ... In this situation we are doing what is the best for the interests of the hostages, and government," Karzai spokesman Humayun Hamidzada told reporters, according to Reuters.
"If we keep on responding positively to the demands of terrorists, we will face more problems," he added.
South Korea, however, has urged U.S. and Afghan governments to show "flexibility" over Taliban demands to exchange its remaining 21 Christian aid workers for imprisoned militants.
"The government is well aware of how the international community deals with these kinds of abduction cases,” Cheon Ho Seon, a spokesman for President Roh Moo Hyun of South Korea, said in a statement Tuesday. “But it also believes that it would be worthwhile to use flexibility in the cause of saving the precious lives of those still in captivity and is appealing to the international community to do so.”
On Sunday, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and other Afghan officials tried to shame the Taliban into releasing the female captives by appealing to a tradition of cultural hospitality and chivalry.
Karzai criticized the Taliban's kidnapping of "foreign guests," especially women, as contrary to the tenets of Islam.
"This will have a shameful effect on the dignity of the Afghan people," Karzai said in a statement from the presidential palace.
The move may have worked as the senior Taliban commander who spoke anonymously to CBS News said the militants were considering the release of the female hostages.
He stressed that if the 18 women were freed, "there will be no money." In recent interviews with CBS News, Taliban leaders have repeatedly denied reports that any ransom was being sought.
However, the Taliban’s purported spokesman told the Associated Press that the next victim “might be a man or a woman.”
“It might be one. It might be two, four. It might be all of them,” Ahmadi reportedly said.
Although talks on the fate of the South Koreans continued Tuesday, a member of the government’s negotiating team told AFP there has been little movement.
