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Taliban demand Indians leave Afghanistan
By Mirwais Afghan
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Taliban insurgents on Saturday threatened to kill a kidnapped Indian telecommunications worker unless Indians left Afghanistan.
The Indian and his Afghan driver were kidnapped after gunmen stopped their car on a road in the volatile southern province of Zabul on Friday.
"If India does not pull out all its nationals working in Afghanistan by 6 p.m. (1330 GMT) tomorrow, we're going to kill him," Taliban spokesman Qari Mohammad Yousuf said by telephone from an undisclosed location.
In New Delhi, the Indian foreign ministry said it was sending a team of officials to Kabul to help secure the release of the man, whom it named as K. Suryanarayan. The team included members with hostage negotiation skills.
But it said India was committed to maintaining a presence in Afghanistan to help work on economic development. India has close relations with Afghanistan and is involved in numerous aid and reconstruction projects.
Violence and lawlessness across much of the Afghan south has crippled development, and the main task of thousands of NATO troops due soon to move into the region will be to ensure sufficient security for reconstruction.
Militants have kidnapped aid agency staff and foreign company workers, who the Taliban say are supporting the Western-backed government. Some have been released but several, including Turks and Indians, have been killed.
Police reinforcements had been sent to Zabul to help with the hunt for the Indian and his driver, said Gulab Shah Alikhail, spokesman for the governor of Zabul.
"By the grace of God, we'll find him soon safe and sound," Alikhail. He declined to comment on the Taliban demand and threat to kill the Indian, a contract worker for Afghan telecommunications company Roshan.
INDIAN PRESENCE
Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran said the Indian government was in touch with the Afghan authorities to establish whether the threat to kill Suryanarayan did indeed came from the people who kidnapped him.
"Our presence in that country is to promote the welfare of the people of Afghanistan ..." he said in a statement.
"We wish to assure the government and the people of Afghanistan that India stands by them and will continue to fulfill its solemn commitments to Afghanistan's development."
Security is a major worry in Afghanistan with Taliban attacks mounting as NATO prepares to double its peacekeeping operations, and the United States hopes to cut its forces there by several thousand.
In a separate incident on Saturday, two Taliban were killed when government troops attacked a Taliban hideout in the volatile southern province of Helmand, a commander said.
About 3,500 British troops are going to be stationed in Helmand province, where the two Taliban were killed in an hour-long clash, said General Rahmatullah Raufi.
U.S. and Afghan opposition forces drove the Taliban from power in late 2001 after the Islamists refused to hand over Osama bin Laden, architect of the Sept. 11 attacks.
(Additional reporting by Shailendra Bhatnagar in New Delhi)
An Indian engineer working in Afghanistan was kidnapped on Friday evening while travelling from , the capital of  province, to .  A. Suryanarayana works for a Bahraini telecommunications and construction firm, ''Al Mayyad''.  According to the Chinese news agency Xinhua, , a spokesman for the Taliban, has claimed responsibility. 

Later, another spokesman for the Taliban,  threatened to kill Suryanarayana within hours if their demand that all Indian citizens leave Afghanistan within 24 hours is not met. The abducted man's wife has said that she and her three children will commit suicide if anything untoward happens to her husband. A team of Indian experts headed by the Joint Secretary of the Ministry of External Affairs, K.B.S. Katoch, has been dispatched to Afghanistan to facilitate the release of Suryanarayana.