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Sout
h Korea said today it would go ahead with its troop deployment
to Iraq, despite a threat from an Islamic group to behead a South
Korean hostage unless the plan is scrapped.
"We will go ahead with the troops dispatch as planned. There are no
changes to our plan," a defence ministry spokesman said.
In a video tape screened on Al-Jazeera television an armed Islamist
group yesterday threatened to behead the hostage unless Seoul
promises within 24 hours to send no more troops to Iraq.
Footage showed the hostage identified as Kim Sun-Il pleading for
his life in English.
"Please get out of here, I don't want to die ... My life is
important," he said.
Three masked, armed men standing behind him said they belonged to
the Tawhid wa al-Jihad (Unification and Holy War) group, led by
Al-Qaeda operative Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi whom Washington blames for
a long list of attacks in Iraq since the fall of Saddam
Hussein.
According to media repots here quoting South Korean diplomats in
Iraq, Kim was an employee of a Korean military-supplies provider
for the US army.
The video was broadcast two days after South Korea, which already
has 660 army engineers and medics in southern Iraq, said it would
start deploying 3 000 troops in early August to help rebuild the
northern Kurdish region.
The hostage's mother in a radio interview here begged the Islamist
group to free her son.
"He is my only son. Please bring him back to us," said Shin
Young-Ja on CBS radio.
South Korea's foreign ministry said Kim was abducted on June 17.
– Sapa-AFP.
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