Fed: Dealing with Taliban new experience for Aust

AAP General News (Australia)
08-07-2001
Fed: Dealing with Taliban new experience for Aust

CANBERRA, Aug 7 AAP - Australia was doing everything it could to free two Australian
aid workers arrested and accused of illegally spreading Christianity in Afghanistan, Foreign
Minister Alexander Downer said today.

The aid workers, a man and a woman, were among 24 staff of a refugee relief agency
arrested over the weekend in the Afghan capital, Kabul.

The Taliban, which adheres to a strict form of Islam, imposes the death penalty on
Afghans converting to another religion and on those found to have encouraged them to do
so.

Australia's nearest diplomatic mission, the high commission in Islamabad, in neighbouring
Pakistan, was doing everything it could to get the Australians freed, Mr Downer said.

"We obviously are going to find it quite difficult to do," Mr Downer told reporters.

"But these are people who by our standards are just hard-working and well-meaning people.

"The challenge for us will be to see that we can get them out."

Australia was working with the United States and Germany, whose nationals were among
the eight foreigners arrested, and was looking at options for the best way to act.

The Taliban, which rules most of the mountainous nation located between Pakistan and
Iran, said the aid workers were working for Shelter Now International (SNI).

SNI is a US-based relief organisation looking after the needs of refugees established
following the 1979 Russian invasion of Afghanistan.

But the Kabul operation is reportedly run by a different German-based agency called
Vision for Asia which sometimes uses the name Shelter Now.

Taliban deputy minister of religious police Mullah Mohammed Salim Haqqani reportedly
said the arrested Australian woman and an American had confessed.

AAP kjp/daw/ph/bwl .

KEYWORD: AFGHAN AUST

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