Chivalry Requested Of Taliban

By JASON STRAZIUSO The Associated Press

Published: Jul 30, 2007

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN - Afghanistan's top political and religious leaders invoked Afghan and Islamic traditions of chivalry and hospitality Sunday in attempts to shame the Taliban into releasing 18 female South Korean captives.

A purported Taliban spokesman shrugged off the demands and instead set a new deadline for the hostages' lives, saying the hard-line militants could kill one or all of the 22 captives if the government didn't release 23 militant prisoners by early today. Several other deadlines have passed without killings.

Afghan officials reported no progress in talks with tribal elders to secure hostages' freedom.

In his first comments since 23 Koreans were abducted July 19, Hamid Karzai criticized the Taliban's kidnapping of "foreign guests," especially women, as contrary to the tenets of Islam and national traditions.

"The perpetration of this heinous act on our soil is in total contempt of our Islamic and Afghan values," Karzai told a South Korean envoy during a meeting at the presidential palace, according to a statement from his office.

Echoing Karzai's words, Afghanistan's national council of clerics said the Prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam, taught that no one has the right to kill women.

"Even in the history of Afghanistan, in all its combat and fighting, Afghans respected women, children and elders," the council said. "The killing of women is against Islam, against the Afghan culture, and they shouldn't do it."

But the Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, instead invoked the religious tenet of "an eye for an eye," alleging that Western militaries are holding Afghan women at bases in Bagram and Kandahar, and saying that the Taliban can do the same. He said the Taliban could detain and kill "women, men or children."