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Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai has ordered the ¡°complete expulsion¡± of all Koreans who went there to take part in a ¡°peace march¡± organized by an evangelical organization, the Foreign Ministry said Wednesday. Lee Joon-kyu, the ministry¡¯s director general in charge of consular affairs, told KBS radio that Kabul informed the Korean Embassy of the decision on Tuesday.
A group of 35 Koreans who arrived at Kabul airport on Tuesday were the first to be stopped. A source with the Institute of Asian Culture and Development, a coalition of evangelical groups sponsoring the event, claimed a few Koreans were injured when Afghan police wielded metal clubs to subdue them, but a Foreign Ministry official quoted a staffer who was present as saying no one was struck, and one individual suffered an abrasion when they resisted.
Choi Han-woo, the head of the IACD, claimed Afghan local authorities and people were ¡°cooperating greatly.¡± "The state of law and order in Afghanistan has grown much better in the last four years," he said. A government official here said, "Maybe the regional authorities have agreed to the event, but the anti-government terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda and the Taliban have not.¡± He warned, there have been 1,100 terrorism-related casualties in the last three months alone, and lawlessness in the war-torn country is the worst it has been since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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