The provincial government of Ghazni is trying to directly contact the Taliban militants, who had demanded direct negotiations with South Korea Monday, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.
A five-member delegation composed of elders and clerics from Ghazni province traveled to a remote area of Qarabagh district Tuesday to try to secure the South Koreans' freedom, said local police chief Khwaja Mohammad Sidiqi, the AP reported.
Ghazni provincial government has been playing as a negotiation outlet with the Taliban at the outset of the kidnapping.
``Our negotiations are continuing,'' the AP quoted Khial Mohammad Husseini, a lawmaker representing Ghazni province in Afghanistan's parliament as saying. ``I hope that today we will get a good result.''
Qari Yousef Ahmadi, purported spokesman for the Taliban, said late Monday the militants had extended the deadline by another day after the Afghan government refused to release any of the 23 Taliban prisoners the insurgents want freed in return for freeing the same number of South Korean hostages..