Taliban puts off deadline on hostage

The Taliban extended its deadline for reaching a deal on the release of a French hostage until after today’s French presidential election.

The Taliban leadership council put off Saturday’s deadline as a sign of mercy, purported Taliban spokesman Qari Mohammed Yousuf said by phone from an undisclosed location.

“We have extended it until the elections are over,” Yousuf said.

Aid worker Eric Damfreville and three Afghan colleagues would be freed if at least one of the Taliban’s demands were met, he said, but added that the Taliban had heard nothing from authorities seeking the hostages’ release.

Celine Cordelier, a French aid worker abducted April 3 with Damfreville and the three Afghans, was released late last month in what the Taliban said was a humanitarian gesture.

The Saturday deadline was the second set by the Taliban.

The militants have demanded the withdrawal of French forces from Afghanistan and the release of Taliban militants jailed by the Afghan government.

“Our reaction is clear. We may kill him,” Yousuf said, when asked what would happen if none of the Taliban demands were met.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said last week that efforts were underway to secure Damfreville’s release, after calls from French President Jacques Chirac urging him to intervene.

The French Foreign Ministry said Saturday that it had taken note of the Taliban communique on the hostages but would not be making any comment.

The five were working for Terre d’Enfance, an agency helping children in southwestern Afghanistan. They were kidnapped in the southwestern province of Nimruz, between Iran and Afghanistan’s opium-producing Helmand province, once the heartland of the Taliban.