Flanigan meets with Afghan president
Three UN workers who were held hostage in Afghanistan including Irish hostage Annetta Flanigan met President Hamid Karzai today, looking tired but happy a day after their release from nearly four weeks of captivity.
Flanigan, from Northern Ireland, Philippine diplomat Angelito Nayan and Shqipe Hebibi, of Kosovo, held a private meeting with the Afghan leader in his palace in Kabul.
Smiling nervously, they later posed alongside Karzai for photographers, but made no comment at all on an ordeal which began and ended in still-murky circumstances.
Nayan, a traditional green Afghan robe draped over his shoulders, declined to answer reporters’ shouted questions. All three left clutching wrapped gifts from the Afghan government.
“We are very glad that by the grace of God our two sisters and a brother who were taken by the hostage-takers, by the criminals, were released safe and sound,” Karzai said. “The Afghan people were saddened and put in serious grief by this incident.”
It was unclear when the three, who helped organise the presidential elections on October 9, which Karzai won, would fly back to their home countries.
Armed men seized the three on a Kabul street on October 28 in the first such abduction of foreigners since the Taliban fell in late 2001, suggesting anti-government rebels were adopting the tactics of Iraqi insurgents.
A Taliban splinter group claimed the kidnappings and said the Afghan government agreed to release 24 jailed comrades.
But Afghan officials insist they did not agree to pay a ransom or free any jailed militants to secure their release. They have declined to identify the suspected kidnappers or to explain how the victims were freed.
The release prompted jubilation among fellow aid workers in Kabul’s 2,000-strong expatriate community. But the United Nations and relief groups warned that much of the country remains dangerous for foreigners.
Areas of Afghanistan are already off-limits to aid organisations because of a stubborn Taliban-led insurgency. Already this year, 24 aid workers have died in violence.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who spoke to the three released workers, said he was “profoundly relieved” their ordeal was over.
He said the world body would need to “strengthen the security of its staff in order to enable it to fulfil the organisation’s mandate to further peace, reconstruction and democracy in Afghanistan”.
Paul Barker, the head of CARE International, one of the largest relief groups in Afghanistan, welcomed the peaceful outcome of the kidnapping but said it was unlikely to prompt aid groups to return to the troubled south and east of the country.
“Had it not ended this way, it would have been a big setback to a lot of reconstruction efforts here,” Barker said. “There are still plenty of serious incidents in all corners of the country.”
