Vital Concerns for the World: Good news: the hostages are being released by the Taliban.

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Good news: the hostages are being released by the Taliban.

The agreement came after direct talks between representatives of the Taliban and the Korean government. The release of the hostages was conditional upon withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan this year and a termination of missionary activities. The Korean government was already planning to withdraw its troops by the end of this year. In fact, it will be a loss to the Afghanistan people because those “troops” were mostly engineers and medical workers. As for the sending of missionaries, that part of the agreement is ambiguous because the government does not send missionaries: Is the Korean government going to restrict individuals from leaving Korea to do missionary work?. A spokesman has said, "The hostages will be released, but the conditions are not as clear cut as that."

Click on the title to see the Al Jazeera report on the release.

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