Female Hostage released by Taliban with ultimatum for French troops

Agence France Press (AFP)report that @ 6.35 BST the Taliban freed Celine one of the 2 captured French workers for Terre d’Enfance (A World For Our Children) who were captured on April 3rd in the southwestern province of Nimroz.

She was delivered in Maiwand district, a Taliban stronghold about 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of Kandahar city, Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi told AFP (by satellite phone from a secret location) and had a letter demanding the withdrawal of French troops for the release of her male companion a French man and three Afghans, a driver, translator and bodyguard,who are still held.

The letter has a message to the French government that it must “cut its military assistance to Afghanistan” in exchange for their freedom, Ahmadi said. Asked if a ransom had been paid, said the aid worker had been freed "because she is a woman".

“We have extended the deadline for the French man and three Afghan hostages for another week,” he said.

There has been no public response by the French authorities other than to confirm the deatils that had been made public.5

See post yesterday Sarkozy stirs the NATO/Afghan pot - threatens withdrawal of French troops

Today is the 15th Anniversary (give a week or so) of the end of communist rule which President Khazai made with a fresh offer of peace to Islamic rebels.

"Today, while celebrating the jihad victory, we once again invite those who have sided with aliens because of seduction against their nation, to give up sedition and evil and join peaceful life," he said.

Kharzai is due to meet the Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf in Turkey tommorrow and the Taliban use of Pakistan tribal areas as a sanctuary and training centre will be high on the agenda. Pakistan denies any continued formal support for the group it helped to power in the 1990s, but is a cross border infiltrati source of constant concern between Islamabad and Kabul. Musgarrif accused President Kharzai of weakness on terrorism in an interview published on Thursday in the Spanish daily El Pais.

President Pervez Musharraf is in the northern city of Tuzla in Bosnia/Herzegovina today and the eastern town of Srebrenica, in which Bosnian Serb troops massacred up to 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men during the country's 1992-1995 war. The pictures shows Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf accompanied by his wife Sehba as they pray at the site in Tuzla April 28, 2007 where 72 boys and girls were killed by a single artillery round in 1995.

Before he arrived in Bosnia, he visited Poland and Spain, and will travel to Turkey from Sarajevo. He didn't find the time presumably to visit Belgrade and explain about the ethnic cleansing of 250,000 Serbs from Kranje Luka by the Bosnian Muslims with the help of the US forces.