The government in Berlin on Tuesday continued its intense efforts for the release of a German engineer, who was kidnapped in Afghanistan - allegedly by the Taliban - a week ago, according to dpa. Chancellor Angela Merkel said her emergency staff would continue to do everything possible, while German public broadcaster ARD's local office said the hostage was "well under the circumstances." The body of the second hostage, a 44-year-old engineer, was due to be brought back to Germany on Wednesday and undergo a post-mortem examination in Cologne the following day. Everything possible would be done to help, Merkel said after a meeting with the UN special envoy for Afghanistan, Tom Koenigs, in Berlin. The government was doing "everything responsible" to save the remaining hostage, who has been held by his kidnappers since last Wednesday. The ARD radio studio in Kabul said they were in regular contact with the hostage. Seven days after his kidnapping he appeared to be weakened after several long treks with his captors, the ARD said. The German engineer, at least four of his Afghan colleagues and the kidnappers were currently in the mountains in the south-eastern Ghazni province, according to ARD information. The group was only moving rarely, walking short distances at a height of around 3,000 metres, it said. The authorities knew of the hostages' whereabouts. The German Defence Ministry confirmed that German Tornado reconnaissance aircraft helped locate the hostages, while Afghan security forces were in the mountains but did not intervene. Negotiations were slow and difficult, the ministry said, and the kidnappers had as yet not made any concrete demands. The Taliban, meanwhile, said Tuesday that the German hostage was seriously ill and without medical supplies. "The German is very ill, he has diabetes," Taliban spokesman Kari Jussif Ahmadi told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. The rebels said they did no have medicine and "cannot help him." There were, however, doubts over whether the Taliban were in fact behind the abduction, following conflicting claims from Taliban spokesmen, one of whom had earlier claimed both hostages had been "executed" along with their Afghan companions. Ahmadi said the hostage was "in difficulties" because the rebels did not have the means to transport him by car and the Taliban wanted the "affair resolved fast." German Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Jaeger, however, has denounced the repeated statements by "so-called Taliban spokesmen" as "malignant propaganda." The Taliban passed on a new demand for the release of the German hostage directly to the German government on Monday evening. Ahmadi said since Germany has rejected a troop withdrawal from Afghanistan as they first demanded, the rebels now wanted the release of ten Taliban fighters from Afghan detention. Merkel meanwhile endorsed the German mission in Afghanistan. Germany had to continue its strategy of interlocking military security and the building up of a police force, she said, and efforts should not be scaled down. Koenigs said it was crucial for Afghanistan that the international community and in particular a strong partner like Germany would "stay on course." "This is more important now than ever," Koenigs said. There are 3,000 German troops on a reconstruction mission in northern Afghanistan.
