Islamabad: The Taliban has offered to release two Indian engineers kidnapped two weeks ago in exchange for 50 militants, a report said today (Dec 20, 2003).

"We have received a letter from Taliban in which they want freedom of 50 detained militiamen to release two Indian engineers," Baz Muhammad, who is in charge of Zabul province's Shahjoy district, told the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP).

"We would never set free the Indians without the release of our men," Mohammad quoted the Taliban as saying.

Both Indians, who were working in the Kabul-Kandahar highway, are being held by Taliban commanders Maulvi Muhammad Alam and Maulvi Ahmadullah in Khak-e-Afghan in the Daychopan mountains in the North of Zabul, Muhammad said.

The two were kidnapped on December 6 when they went to buy chickens in a village near Shahjoy, 280 kilometres Southwest of Kabul, in the heart of Zabul province where violence blamed on Taliban militants is rampant.

Muhammad said that no key Taliban leaders are among those being sought by the engineers' captors.

He said that most of those the Taliban want exchanged were forced by the student militia to fight along them against rivals in Northern Afghanistan but arrested after the Taliban were defeated two years ago.

"Now most of them (prisoners) are in Shibergan prison."

Muhammad said with the letter from the Taliban he also received letter allegedly written by the engineers detailing their well-being and good health.