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Bangladesh Gives Kidnapper Two Days To Free Europeans Or Face Assault
DHAKA, March 1 (News Agencies)- Bangladeshi authorities Thursday gave tribal kidnappers two days to release three Europeans held hostage for the past two weeks or face military assaults, the official BSS news agency reported.
"The soft line mediation effort will be over just after two days and the hostage issue will be handed over to the Bangladesh Army on next Sunday," the official BSS news agency quoted Tribal Affairs Minister Kalpa Ranjan Chakma.
Chakma was speaking at a public rally in the southeastern Rangamati hill district where two Danes and a Briton were kidnapped on February 16th for a ransom of $6.1 billion.
Terming the hardline option as "hazardous", Chakma warned: "Army operation is risky and there could be casualties."
The ultimatum came a day after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasian Wajed warned that army commandos would launch a rescue operation to free the hostages - Danes Torben Mikkelsen and Nils Hulgaard and Briton Tim Selby - if negotiations fail.
"Currently negotiators are slowly progressing and the commandos have been kept on standby ... the commandos will be forced to take action to free the three if they [tribesmen] don't settle the matter through negotiations," she said in Dhaka Wednesday.
The three foreigners had been conducting a survey for a government road project in the Rangamati district, when six gunmen, believed from a tribal group, kidnapped them.
A fourth man, David Weston, a Briton, was freed on the day of the kidnapping along with a Bangladeshi driver and sent to collect the ransom.
Rangamati, which has a history of insurgency, is part of the rugged Chittagong Hill Tracts region bordering India and Myanmar.
The kidnappers, demanding lifting of a military cordon of their hideout as a condition for talks, had been warned that their relatives being held by authorities would "face problems" and military action would follow if the three were not released unharmed.
A group opposed to a 1997 treaty between Dhaka and tribal opposition members, the United Peoples Democratic Front (UPDF) led by Proshit Khisha, in a statement earlier warned, "unnecessary actions could endanger the lives of the hostages."
The UPDF has been suspected of being behind the kidnapping, but it denied the charges.
Bangladesh army chief Lieutenant General M. Harun-Ar-Rashid toured Rangamati this week and turned down the kidnappers' condition for talks, saying, "the government has decided not to lift security cordon."
In Copenhagen, a 15-member team of Danish MPs Tuesday cancelled its scheduled March 2-8 trip to Bangladesh in order not to interfere with negotiations for the hostage release.
Britain earlier sent three Scotland Yard detectives to Bangladesh to help negotiate the hostages' release and re-affirmed its long-standing policy of not paying ransoms when its subjects are held hostage.
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