Somalia
Hostage crisis in Somalia solved

afrol News, 5 April - The remaining two United Nations staff members detained in Somalia after last week's militia attack were released today in Mogadishu and flown to Kenya, the UN reported tonight. No money is said to have been paid for the release. 

The workers - Bill Condie, 61, and Roger Carter, 41- were picked up by a UN plane and transported to Nairobi, UN spokesman Fred Eckhard told the press tonight at the Organization's Headquarters in New York. "Both are reported to be in good health," Mr. Eckhard added.

The staff members, both nationals of the United Kingdom, had been held by a Somali militia faction since 27 March, when they were abducted along with four other UN workers and four staff from the French relief organization Médecins sans Frontières during an attack in Mogadishu. Mr. Condie and Mr. Parker are working for the UN children's agency (UNICEF). 

The UN seems to have achieved the release without giving into the gunmen's demands. "No money was paid by the UN," said Hussein Jillow, an elder who had been negotiating with the men's captors. 

UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said the UN welcomed the unconditional release of the two staff members, which followed the previous release of the other UN aid workers. Somali gunmen handed over the British men to the UN on Wednesday morning. They had been held for more than a week in the Somali capital, Mogadishu. 

The UN had been in contact with the two staff members all the time, conducting talks to secure their release. The UN had been making sure that the captives had access to adequate food and water. Five of the seven people abducted on 27 March had been released earlier.

UN Secretary-General Annan on Monday had been quick to reiterate his strong condemnation of the tactics of the militia responsible for the abductions. "These lawless and reckless people who prey on young men and women from distant lands who've come to help, whose only reason for being in Somalia is to help the needy, ought to understand that their behaviour is something that the international community cannot accept and cannot condone," he stressed. "Aid workers deserve better treatment and deserve our appreciation and thanks rather than this kind of treatment."

Correspondents in Mogadishu say the hostage-taking underlines the problems faced by Somalia's new national government, headed by President Abdulkassim Salad Hassan, which was formed last year after months of peace negotiations in Djibouti. Somalia had not had a central government for ten years. There are still many warring groups not recognising President Abdulkassim's government, including the two self-declared northern states Puntland and Somaliland. 

Sources: Based on UN sources and afrol archives.

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