Militants threatening to behead a South Korean hostage in Iraq unless Seoul pulls troops out of the country have agreed to give more time for talks on his fate, an Iraqi mediator has told Reuters. Jamaat al-Tawhid and Jihad, a group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who has been accused by Washington of links to al Qaeda, initially set a Monday night deadline when Kim Sun-il was shown pleading for his life in a video tape on Al Jazeera. But Mohammed al-Obeidi, an Iraqi working for South Korean security firm NKTS in Baghdad, said Iraqi clerics who were in talks with the captors of the 33-year-old had told him the deadline for talks had been extended. Seoul has rejected the demand to pull troops out and scrap plans to send more. "The kidnappers have said they are willing to negotiate as long as the Korean government stops making provocative remarks and softens its tone on troop deployment," Obeidi said. "We have been asking for cooperation and received information through various channels," Seoul’s chief foreign ministry spokesman said. A Seoul commerce ministry spokeswoman said all South Koreans working for firms in Iraq were likely to leave the country by early next month.
In another test for U.S.-led authorities, Iran seized three British naval boats and arrested eight British crew, saying they had entered its waters near the Iraqi border. Britain said it had "lost contact" with military personnel in the narrow Shatt al-Arab waterway between Iran and Iraq before later announcing they were being held by Iran. A Defence Ministry spokesman in London said the crew were helping to train Iraqi police. A British diplomat in Tehran said the British government was in close contact with Iranian authorities in the Iranian capital and in London. Iranian state television said Tehran would prosecute the British sailors, a move likely to fan a minor border incident into a diplomatic crisis. The British government immediately demanded an explanation from Tehran of the report.
In the northern city of Mosul, a university dean and her husband were found murdered on Tuesday in the latest in a series of killings of high-profile figures in Iraq. Sabotage last week halted all oil exports, but officials said they resumed on Monday after repairs to one of two pipelines blown up in southern Iraq. The sabotage had choked about 1.6 million barrels of daily exports from Gulf terminals.
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