A militant commander who is holding a US soldier abducted in Afghanistan said Sunday that Taleban leader Mullah Omar's council was waiting for a response to its demands before deciding the American's fate. It was the first news of Pfc. Bowe R. Bergdahl, 23, made public since a Taleban video was released on July 18. Maulvi Sangin, an insurgent commander for eastern Afghanistan, said the Taleban's governing body was awaiting a response to demands it made to the United States for his return. “The American's fate is in the hand of (leadership), which is waiting until a response from the Americans to its demands,” Sangin told The AP. Sangin would not elaborate on the demands or say if any deadline had been given. A spokesman for Sangin had previously said the soldier would be killed unless the US stopped airstrikes in two areas of eastern Afghanistan. Bergdahl, of Hailey, Idaho, was serving with an Alaska-based infantry regiment when he disappeared on June 30, just five months after arriving in Afghanistan. He was serving at an eastern base near the border with Pakistan. The circumstances of his capture weren't clear. Details of such incidents are routinely withheld by the military to avoid giving away any information to captors. Sangin, who spoke by telephone from Pakistan, refused to say to say on which side of the border Bergdahl was being held. Lt. Cmdr. Christine Sidenstricker, a US military spokeswoman in Kabul, did not comment on the status of Bergdahl's case. “We do not want to do anything that compromises his safety or efforts to recover him,” she said. “Recovery efforts remain one of the largest ongoing operations and we are doing everything we can to get him back safely.”
