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Iraq militants behead S. Korean hostage
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-06-23 07:40 (Continued)
Although Kim's kidnappers initially set a deadline of sundown Monday for
Seoul to meet its demands, they postponed the execution as South Korean
diplomats and intermediaries sought negotiations.
South Korea's Yonhap news agency, in a dispatch from Baghdad, quoted an
"informed source" as saying that negotiations collapsed over the South Korean
government's refusal to drop its plan to send troops.
"As a condition for starting negotiations for Kim's release, the kidnappers
demanded that South Korea announce that it would retract its troop dispatch
plan," the source was quoted as saying. "This was a condition the South Korean
government could not accept. As the talks bogged down, the kidnappers apparently
resorted to an extreme measure."
After Kim's death was confirmed, South Korea convened its National Security
Council before dawn to discuss the government's reaction, said Shin, the Foreign
Ministry spokesman. Later, the government reaffirmed plans to keep its 600
troops in Iraq and send 3,000 more by August.
But the government ordered all its nonessential South Korean civilians to
leave Iraq as soon as possible.
U.S. President Bush condemned the beheading as "barbaric" and said he
remained confident that South Korea would go ahead with plans to send the troops
to Iraq. South Korea will be the third-largest troop contributor after the
United States and Britain.
"The free world cannot be intimidated by the brutal actions of these barbaric
people," the president said.
U.S. officials, meanwhile, said they would hand legal custody of Saddam
Hussein and an undetermined number of former regime figures to the interim
government as soon as Iraqi courts issue warrants for their arrest and request
the transfer.
However, the United States will retain physical custody of Saddam and the
prisoners, while giving Iraqi prosecutors and defense lawyers access to them,
one official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
A car bomb exploded in a Baghdad residential neighborhood near the
international airport Tuesday, killing three people, including a 3-year-old
girl, and wounding six other Iraqis, said Maj. Phil Smith, a U.S. military
spokesman.
U.S. troops sealed off the area after the late afternoon explosion, but
neither American nor Iraqi security forces were in the area at the time of the
blast, witnesses said. Three cars were burned and several shops were damaged in
the Amiriya neighborhood.
The recent abductions and attacks appear aimed at undermining the interim
Iraqi government set to take power June 30, when the U.S.-led occupation
formally ends.
Coalition spokesman Dan Senor said that by week's end, all Iraqi government
ministries would be under full Iraqi control.
The coalition official who briefed reporters about the prisoner custody issue
said the Americans will keep Saddam and others under U.S. guard even after the
June 30 handover because the Iraqi government does not yet have capacity to hold
such prisoners, the official said.
U.S. troops captured Saddam in December near his hometown of Tikrit.
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