Iraq militants behead S. Korean hostage
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-06-23 07:40

(Continued)

Although Kim's kidnappers initially set a deadline of sundown Monday for Seoul to meet its demands, they postponed the execution as South Korean diplomats and intermediaries sought negotiations.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency, in a dispatch from Baghdad, quoted an "informed source" as saying that negotiations collapsed over the South Korean government's refusal to drop its plan to send troops.

"As a condition for starting negotiations for Kim's release, the kidnappers demanded that South Korea announce that it would retract its troop dispatch plan," the source was quoted as saying. "This was a condition the South Korean government could not accept. As the talks bogged down, the kidnappers apparently resorted to an extreme measure."

After Kim's death was confirmed, South Korea convened its National Security Council before dawn to discuss the government's reaction, said Shin, the Foreign Ministry spokesman. Later, the government reaffirmed plans to keep its 600 troops in Iraq and send 3,000 more by August.

But the government ordered all its nonessential South Korean civilians to leave Iraq as soon as possible.

U.S. President Bush condemned the beheading as "barbaric" and said he remained confident that South Korea would go ahead with plans to send the troops to Iraq. South Korea will be the third-largest troop contributor after the United States and Britain.

"The free world cannot be intimidated by the brutal actions of these barbaric people," the president said.

U.S. officials, meanwhile, said they would hand legal custody of Saddam Hussein and an undetermined number of former regime figures to the interim government as soon as Iraqi courts issue warrants for their arrest and request the transfer.

However, the United States will retain physical custody of Saddam and the prisoners, while giving Iraqi prosecutors and defense lawyers access to them, one official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

A car bomb exploded in a Baghdad residential neighborhood near the international airport Tuesday, killing three people, including a 3-year-old girl, and wounding six other Iraqis, said Maj. Phil Smith, a U.S. military spokesman.

U.S. troops sealed off the area after the late afternoon explosion, but neither American nor Iraqi security forces were in the area at the time of the blast, witnesses said. Three cars were burned and several shops were damaged in the Amiriya neighborhood.

The recent abductions and attacks appear aimed at undermining the interim Iraqi government set to take power June 30, when the U.S.-led occupation formally ends.

Coalition spokesman Dan Senor said that by week's end, all Iraqi government ministries would be under full Iraqi control.

The coalition official who briefed reporters about the prisoner custody issue said the Americans will keep Saddam and others under U.S. guard even after the June 30 handover because the Iraqi government does not yet have capacity to hold such prisoners, the official said.

U.S. troops captured Saddam in December near his hometown of Tikrit.

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