Khartoum - A shadowy Darfur group which says it kidnapped three French aid workers in Chad and the Central African Republic threatened on Monday to kill them unless Paris agrees to direct negotiations.
"We want to negotiate directly with France, but France wants to negotiate through a third party like Chad. We reject that," spokesperson Abu Mohammed Rizeigi told AFP by satellite phone.
"We're going to kill them because France is not negotiating directly with us."
Rizeigi's group has claimed responsibility for the kidnappings of a French agronomist with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and two staff of relief agency Triangle in the Central African Republic (CAR) whose names have not been released.
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'The motives have always appeared to be economic' In an interview with AFP on Thursday, ICRC worker Laurent Maurice, who was kidnapped in a Chadian village near the Sudanese border, said that he was bearing up despite his ordeal, then in its 17th day.
"I have been deprived of my liberty for 17 days but I'm bearing up," he said by satellite telephone, adding that he had been able to contact his family through the ICRC.
"I am in Chad," he added, without elaborating, contradicting the account of a senior Chadian official who had said that the kidnappers had taken their hostage into the western Sudanese region of Darfur.
In a separate phone call on Thursday, Rizeigi said his group was targeting France because it had failed to change tack when the group held two other aid workers, a Frenchwoman and a Canadian, earlier this year.
"We want France to change policy in the region," he said.
He said his group was the same one which held two staff of French relief group Aide Medicale Internationale for 25 days before releasing them on April 29.
"We kidnapped the two girls," he said. "At the time we asked France to change policy in the region but nothing was done."
In April, the kidnappers gave their name as the Falcons for the Liberation of Africa.
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