South Korea deployment to proceed; pipelines reopen
Iyad Allawi: They are trying to destroy our country and we are not going to allow this.
Baghdad (AsiaNews/agencies) - South Korea Foreign Minister Choi Young-jin said Monday his country would stand by a decision to send 3,000 soldiers to Iraq despite a videotaped threat from the kidnappers of a South Korean, Kim Sun-il. His abductors threatened to behead him in a video posted on a Web site Sunday.
Choi said Kim, an Arabic graduate, had been seized in Falluja on 17 June - the day before South Korea announced where its troops would be deployed after months of agonising because of security concerns and public opposition.
As many as 10 other foreigners are being held with Kim, including a European journalist and "third country" employees for the U.S.-based contractor Kellogg Brown & Root, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported, citing Kim's employer.
Kim Chun-ho, head of South Korea's Gana General Trading, Co., told a Yonhap reporter in Baghdad by phone from Mosul that some of the captives were seen by an Iraqi go-between who had visited the kidnappers to try negotiating the South Korean's release.
Meanwhile, an official from a U.S.-based shipping company said Monday that Iraq has resumed oil exports of about 1 million barrels a day through its southern Basra terminal: "Crude oil is being loaded onto one tanker at the rate of 42,000 barrels an hour, or about 1,008,000 barrels a day", he said.
Key oil pipelines were damaged Tuesday and Wednesday in separate sabotage attacks, halting oil exports. Insurgents have attacked the oil pipelines and other infrastructure targets in hopes of undermining the interim government of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi ahead of the June 30 transfer of power.
On Sunday, Allawi said the Iraqi government may impose martial law in parts of the country to fight terrorists and that he intends to resurrect aspects of Iraq's former military.
Allawi's restructuring of the security services will enlarge the overall army while creating police and paramilitary units focused on controlling riots and fighting guerrillas.
"They are trying to destroy our country and we are not going to allow this," Allawi said.
.png)
