New hope for Bangladesh hostages

Security is tight in the area: Police check a tourist's papers

By South Asia correspondent Mike Wooldridge

The kidnapping of a British engineer, Tim Selby, and two Danes in Bangladesh has gone into its third week with the apparent restoration of indirect contacts with the kidnappers.

A government minister has said he is hopeful that the incident may be brought to a peaceful end.

Briton Tim Selby: Was surveying road project

An ultimatum to the kidnappers to free the hostages or face possible military action to rescue them has been extended.

The government of Bangladesh had previously warned that the army would be sent on Saturday in if the three were not released.

After two weeks of mostly frustrated attempts to make contact with kidnappers, there is an evident wariness about placing too much store by this new development.

Freedom hopes

But Kalparanjan Chakma, the Bangladesh government minister who has been playing a leading role in the efforts to get negotiations going, has said he is now hopeful that the hostages may be freed as early as Monday.

He says the intermediary he has been in contact with reported that the men were bearing up reasonably well to their ordeal in the remote jungle where they are being held.

The kidnappers had originally demanded a ransom of more than £1m. That is apparently not being mentioned now.

The issues at stake appear to be to do with safe passage after releasing the hostages and the freeing of relatives of the kidnappers who were rounded up by the army.

They are now said to have been released.

But what is not clear at this stage is whether the hostages are still all together or are being held separately and how many people are holding them.

Tribal insurgency

The identity of the kidnappers remains a mystery too, though it has been assumed all along that the kidnapping was carried out by a faction dissatisfied with the peace accord that ended a lengthy tribal insurgency four years ago.

Tim Selby, 28, of Oldham, Greater Manchester, was kidnapped on 16 February with two Danish colleagues, Torben Mikkelsen, 48, and Nils Hulgaard, 64.

The three were working on a road project in south-east Bangladesh.

They work for Kampsax, a Copenhagen-based construction consultancy firm, along with another British engineer, David Weston, 56, and his Bangladeshi driver, Abdul Motaleb, who were freed and told to return with the ransom money.

Army commandos have cordoned off an area of dense forest where the abductors and their hostages are believed to be staying.