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India-Pakistan
Taliban militants threaten to kill Pakistani hostages
2008-07-12
Militants will start killing a group of hostages if the government does not release several insurgent prisoners within a day, a Pakistani Taliban spokesman threatened Friday. A suspected militant leader is among those the Taliban want freed.

Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said his country does not negotiate with terrorists and will not capitulate to threats. "We will take action when it's required," he said after a speech at a think tank in Washington.
The action they'll take will look remarkably like capitualion, but don't go calling it that. Call it a spade or something.
Maulvi Umar, the Taliban spokesman, claimed the Taliban had kidnapped 29 people, most of them security forces. However, Hangu district official Haji Khan Afzal said only 16 or 17 people were being held.
Oh, well. That's different then.
Both sides have been negotiating over the captives, who Afzal said were taken in the wake of a militant siege of a local police station earlier this week in the country's volatile northwest. Officials said more than 100 militants surrounded the Doaba station to demand their associates be freed, and the siege ended after army troops showed up. But the militants have not dropped their demands. Umar insisted the government release seven militant prisoners, including a suspected top insurgent known as Rafiuddin, by 2 p.m. Saturday or the hostages would be slain. "It's our final warning," Umar said.

On Thursday, Interior Ministry chief Rehman Malik announced the arrest of Rafiuddin, an alleged deputy to top Pakistani Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud in South Waziristan.
Posted by:Fred

#3  #2: 'cause the Taliban serve the strategic interests of the Pakistani military. Posted by: john frum|| 2008-07-12 07:25

Just one more reason to remove from the world maps the "nation" known as "pakistan". There has not been a year since Pakistan was created in 1947 where there wasn't fighting of some kind going on there. Pakistan is a boil on the body politic of the world, and needs to be surgically lanced.
Posted by: Old Patriot   2008-07-12 13:41  

#2  'cause the Taliban serve the strategic interests of the Pakistani military.
Posted by: john frum   2008-07-12 07:25  

#1  Why can't the Pakistani government just lift it's veil of protection along the border region and wait until the Taliban squeal "uncle"?
Posted by: gorb   2008-07-12 03:18  

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