Tough Stance

A growing debate has arisen in Germany on how the country should deal with freeing kidnapped nationals. The interior affairs expert for the Social Democrats (SPD) Dieter Wiefelspütz said there shouldn't be a sole strategy for handling kidnappings.

"The government is well-advised to make such decisions based on each individual case," Wiefelspütz told the German daily Frankfurter Rundschau in its Tuesday edition. He said Germany had so far dealt with kidnappings satisfactorily.

"I don't see that there has been any careless action taken here," Wiefelspütz said.

Monday night Afghan police found the body of a second South Korean who had been killed by the Taliban in Ghasni province. The fundamentalist Islamists kidnapped 23 South Koreans on July 19 and have said they would only set the group free if eight of their fighters were released from Afghan jails. They had said Monday they would kill one of the hostages in response to failed negotiations with the Afghan government.

A German engineer has been in the hands of kidnappers in Afghanistan for over one-and-a-half weeks. A second hostage died during captivity. His body is currently being examined; results of the autopsy are expected at the end of the week. In addition, a German national has been in the hands of captors in Iraq since Feb. 6.

Germany doesn't want to become a pawn

The government doesn't officially confirm paying ransom for kidnapped nationals. Yet negotiations behind the scenes and ransom payments are alleged to take place.

The foreign affairs spokesman for the SPD parliamentary group, Gert Weisskirchen, said that all possibilities had to be exhausted in order to save human lives. But Germany could not be blackmailed and he was not in favor of ransom payments, he said.

"If this barrier were broken, we would become a pawn for anyone anywhere in the world who comes up with the idea to kidnap German nationals and already the money flows," Weisskirchen told German radio RBB. "This can't be the response of the federal government."

The daily Süddeutsche Zeitung quoted a high-ranking government security expert on whether Germany should take a tougher line against kidnappers in view of the series of kidnappings of Germans in the Middle East and Afghanistan. "We have to consider whether we can take the responsibility for paying ransom for a hostage -- money which is then used to buy weapons to kill our soldiers in Afghanistan," the expert told the paper.

"Germany cannot be blackmailed."

The German government, meanwhile, has said it will continue its tough stance.

"Our position is unchanged: Germany cannot be blackmailed," deputy spokesman Thomas Steg said in Berlin on Monday. At the same time, the government was doing "everything humanly possible and everything justifiable" to protect the lives of the victims.

Yet the protection of national interests also had to be taken into consideration, he said.