| Submit your comments on this article |
| India-Pakistan |
| No group has claimed envoy's kidnapping: FO |
| 2008-02-14 |
| The Foreign Ministry on Wednesday denied media reports that the Taliban had demanded the release of captured Afghan Taliban commander Mullah Mansoor Dadullah in exchange for Pakistani Ambassador to Afghanistan Tariq Azizuddin. Ambassador Tariq was traveling through the Khyber Agency and had been due to change cars at the frontier crossing but he never reached the border. His driver and bodyguard are also missing. Dadullah was captured in Quetta on Monday. Foreign Office spokesman Mohammad Sadiq said the government was sure that the envoy was alive. He said no one had claimed responsibility for the abduction. “As far as the report of Dadullah is concerned, nobody has contacted the Government of Pakistan,” he said. “The issue is very sensitive, it relates to the life of a colleague.” The abduction came at the same time as masked gunmen kidnapped two nuclear technicians in the Tribal Areas. He said Pakistan had received sympathy messages from foreign friends but it required no help from other countries to trace the ambassador. Kidnapped: The hunt for Tariq remained uneventful on the third day of his abduction. Khyber Agency Assistant Political Agent Ghulam Rasool confirmed that Ambassador Tariq had been kidnapped in the agency precincts. Earlier, the government said it was unsure whether Tariq had been abducted. Rasool told Daily Times that the administration was unaware about the abductors’ identity. Regarding the search operation for the abducted envoy, another agency official said it was not a house-to-house search operation, adding that the administration was in touch with local clerics, tribal elders, and ‘notorious gangsters’ to find a clue about the ambassador’s whereabouts. Not involved: Separately, local Taliban militants denied involvement in the abduction. “We have no links with it. We don’t know anything about that,” militant leader Baitullah Mehsud’s spokesman Maulvi Umar told Reuters. |
| Posted by:Fred |