AMIR SHAH
GHAZNI

Two South Korean women kidnapped by the Taliban burst into tears yesterday after being released into Red Cross custody on a desert road.

The women's release was the first significant breakthrough in a hostage drama involving 23 South Koreans now more than three weeks old and came after two days of face-to-face talks between the Taliban and a South Korean delegation. Two male captives were executed by gunfire in late July. Fourteen women and five men are still being held.

A spokesman for the hardline militants said they released the women as a show of goodwill and because negotiations were going well. Qari Yousef Ahmadi also reiterated the militants' demand that Taliban prisoners be released in exchange for the remaining 19 hostages. The Afghan government has ruled out any prisoner swap.

Officials from the International Committee of the Red Cross waited for the Koreans on a stretch of desert road five miles south of the city of Ghazni. When a dark grey Toyota Corolla stopped, two women got out of the back seat and began crying at the sight of the waiting Red Cross SUVs.

Wearing scarves on their heads, khaki trousers and traditional Afghan knee-length shirts, the women had been driven by an Afghan elder named Haji Zahir, who also got into the Red Cross vehicle.

A convoy carried the women to the US base in Ghazni city, where American and Afghan soldiers blocked the road. The women got out of the car, US soldiers searched them and then escorted them inside.

Their release marked the first big break in a hostage drama that began on July 19 when the group of 23 church volunteers were captured while travelling by bus from Kabul to the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar.

The South Korean president's office said the government and the public were "pleased" at their safe release, and President Roh Moo-hyun instructed officials "to make every effort to ensure other captives are safely released".

The Taliban released the two Koreans "for the sake of good relations between the Korean people and the Taliban," said Ahmadi.

"We are expecting the Korean people and government to force the Kabul administration and the US to take a step toward releasing Taliban prisoners," Ahmadi said.

The Taliban have been demanding the release of 21 militant prisoners being held in jails by the Afghan government and US military at the base at Bagram. Ghazni governor Marajudin Pathan ruled out a prisoner swap out of fear kidnapping could become an industry in Afghanistan.

The South Korean Foreign Ministry identified the freed hostages as Kim Kyung-ja and Kim Ji-na. Previous media reports said they were 37 and 32 years old, respectively.

The news came as Defence Secretary Des Browne said a "long-term commitment" in Afghanistan was essential to prevent its return to being a training ground for terrorists. He was speaking following the death of another British soldier in the volatile Helmand province over the weekend.

Mr Browne said UK forces were doing an "exceptionally good job", but they needed to be supported by the growth of governance in the country.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "We are in Afghanistan to ensure its citizens have the best future they can have.

"And to ensure that this ungoverned space, as it had become after 30 years of that sort of violence, never again becomes a training ground for terrorists."

Mr Browne expressed his condolences to the family of the latest serviceman to be killed in Afghanistan.

The soldier who was killed on Saturday from the 1st Battalion The Royal Anglian Regiment was due to be named last night. However, he is now expected to be formally named today.-AP/PA