By Kang Hyun-kyung
Staff Reporter
Five major political parties Wednesday urged the U.S. and Afghan governments to play a positive role in resolving the Korean hostage standoff in Afghanistan.
They also sent a letter to Ban Ki-moon, secretary-general of the United Nations, asking him to take a more proactive role in freeing 21 Koreans taken hostage by Taliban militants since July 19.
In a joint statement adopted at a meeting of floor leaders in Seoul, they called on the Kabul government to employ every possible means to prevent any further killings of innocent hostages. ``Just repeating the principle of not dealing with terrorists and maintaining the hard-line stance could bring another sacrifice."
By pressing the U.S. government, the parties joined the worldwide campaign to keep the hostages safe and secure their return home.
``We urge the Taliban to stop the killing of Korean hostages and set them free,'' the statement said.
They said that the hostages are good civilians who went to Afghanistan to help the country and its citizens and, accordingly, the Taliban's kidnapping and killing of these aid volunteers cannot be justified.
The floor leaders admitted that the Korean government has virtually no effective tools to stop the Taliban's brutality.
They emphasized that the U.N. should intervene in the hostage deadlock through its peacekeeping operation.
Korea has been a member of the international institution since 1991 and it is one of the top 10 donor countries sponsoring the global peacekeeping efforts.
Seoul has sent peacekeeping troops to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lebanon.
``If the U.N. is not seeking any action to help resolve the hostage crisis, it will make the participating countries of the global peace efforts frustrated,'' said the statement.
A group of lawmakers led by floor leaders of the main opposition Grand National Party (GNP) and the Democratic Labor Party (DLP) plan to visit the U.S. as early as possible to press Washington to be more active in resolving the crisis.
``The delegates are seeking to meet decision makers of the Bush administration, speaker of the House of Representatives, and other officials. We plan to contact them, but nothing has been confirmed so far,'' a GNP source said.
Asked why the parliamentary reaction came so late on the urgent issue, Rep. Kim Choong-whan of the GNP told The Korea Times that it is mainly because the National Assembly has many stakeholders.
Kim said early discussion was made at the relevant committee level and as the situation grew more critical, all parties came to work together for the discussion of the effective options.
Presidential hopefuls expressed worries over the deteriorating situation of the hostages in Afghanistan and some of them asked Islamic leaders for help.
Former Seoul Mayor Lee Myung-bak, who belongs to the GNP, sent letters to the leaders of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and the United Arab Emirates to help settle the situation.
Park Geun-hye, a former GNP chairwoman, expressed concern over the sequential killings of the hostages.
Chung Dong-young, a former chairman of the pro-government Uri Party, released an open letter reminding the Taliban that the Korean aid volunteers they are holding are not their enemies and they should set them free.