Deal to free hostages in Yemen collapses
(AP)
Updated: 2005-12-31 10:17

A deal for the release of a kidnapped former German diplomat and his family has fallen through after tribesmen who abducted the group backed out of the agreement, a Yemeni official said Saturday.

The hostages were being driven to the mountaintop negotiating site in Shabwa province in eastern Yemen, where the abduction occurred, when the deal fell apart, said the area's deputy governor, Nasser Ba'oum.

There was no information on when negotiations might resume or where the hostages had been taken to spend the night.

The agreement had called for Yemeni negotiators to exchange themselves, according to Sheik Awadh Bin al-Wazir, a parliament deputy and a key member of the negotiating team. After the deal fell through, he could not be reached for comment.

The tribesmen, who abducted Juergen Chrobog, his wife and three children as they toured the mountains of eastern Yemen on Wednesday, demanded the release of five jailed members of their clan.

Ba'oum said the tribal leaders were now calling also for the arrest of members of a rival clan.

Chrobog, 65, served as deputy foreign minister in Gerhard Schroeder's government, which left office in November. He had been German ambassador to Washington.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier answers journalists' questions on the kidnapping of former German Foreign Ministery's top official Juergen Chrobog in Yemen as he stands in front of a map of Yemen prior to a meeting of the crisis committee in Berlin Thursday, Dec. 29, 2005.[AP]

Al-Wazir had said the government agreed to the deal to exchange the negotiators for the hostages to "speed the hostage release and to keep this issue as a one that is between Yemenis, as well as out of our sense of humanitarian and moral responsibility."

The Cairo-based correspondent for Germany's ARD television reported on Friday that she had spoken briefly with Chrobog by cell phone, and the diplomat said he and his family were well.

Correspondent Goliheh Atai also said she had spoken with one of the kidnappers, who "assured us the Germans are well and that they are being kept not in tents but in two houses and that we shouldn't worry."

In Berlin, Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Jaeger had told reporters, "We hope we will arrive at a solution by tomorrow (Saturday) evening."

The kidnappers had demanded the government release five members of their al-Abdullah bin Dahha tribe who were detained and standing trial for allegedly killing two members of a rival tribe in October.

Tribesmen frequently kidnap tourists in an attempt to force concessions from the government in Yemen, a poor, mountainous nation on the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula where state control in outlying areas is shaky.

Hostages are usually released unharmed in Yemen, but several were killed in 2000 when security forces carried out a botched raid to free them.