Austria to AQ: We reject your deadline...

Austria rejects Al Qaeda’s deadline on hostage issue

They're not negotiating with terrorists, they're using intermediaries.

Nuance.

There's no nuance in one of the 10 prisoners involved in the prison release demand issuing a statement via his lawyer saying no thanks, he'd rather stay in an Austrian prison if it was all the same to them.

Hah!

Austria is refusing to treat an April 6 midnight deadline as definitive in its drive to free two citizens kidnapped last month in northern Africa, a foreign ministry spokesman said yesterday.

“We are pursuing intensive efforts, with the aid of a large number of people, to reach a solution,” Peter Launsky-Tieffenthal told AFP. “(But) we have never considered April 6th as a deadline, and (our) efforts will continue over and above (that date).”

Vienna has yet to broach direct negotiations with the hostage-takers, the Algeria-based Al Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb.

Instead, its four-strong team – led by diplomat Anton Prohaska is maintaining dialogue through intermediaries from Mali President Amadou Toumani Toure’s office.


Andrea Kloiber and Wolfgang Ebner were abducted on February 22 as they holidayed in the Tunisian desert and are now believed to be in northern Mali or southern Algeria.

The kidnappers initially set a March 16 deadline, then March 23 and finally moved the date to Sunday. They have threatened to kill the hostages if any attempt is made to free them by force.
Austrian authorities have so far kept a guarded silence on the kidnappers’ demands, but the country’s press has speculated that they are motivated by money rather than ideology.

They initially demanded the release of a number of Islamists imprisoned in Algeria and Tunisia in exchange for the Austrians’ freedom, then according to press reports, demanded five million euros ($7.9m) in ransom money.

Austrian public radio has since reported, on March 31, that extra conditions were added: an increase in the ransom figure; the withdrawal of Austrian soldiers on NATO deployment in Afghanistan; and the liberation of two Islamists convicted on March 10 in Vienna of distributing a video threatening terror attacks on Austria and Germany.

One of those men, sentenced to four years’ imprisonment, has made it known through his lawyer that he wanted “nothing to do” with the kidnappers and that he refused to be offered in exchange for the tourists.

Interviewed yesterday in the daily Standard, Ebner’s son Bernhart said he was “cautiously optimistic” his father would be coming home.

According to his information, three of the kidnappers who appeared in images outlining their demands have been identified as having taken part in the abduction of German tourists in 2003, who were safely freed after mediation by the Malian president.

“All of these details are noted and analysed, but they can’t be commented upon in the interests of the hostages’ security,” said Launsky-Tieffenthal.