AFP - Afghan authorities were grappling with a third hostage crisis Saturday after a German woman was abducted by armed men as she crossed a road in the capital Kabul, officials and witnesses said.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the woman's abduction, which added to the headaches of officials already trying to secure the release of 19 South Korean aid workers and a German engineer kidnapped by Taliban militants.

Earlier Saturday, a spokesman for the hardline militia said the Taliban were deciding the fate of the Koreans, abducted in volatile southern Ghazni province nearly a month ago, as negotiations for their release had failed.

In Kabul, officials and witnesses said the German woman was abducted at gunpoint by unknown assailants in an area of the capital near parliament, the capital's university and the offices of several non-governmental organisations.

"Today at 1:30 in the afternoon, a German woman was abducted by unknown armed men in an alley," interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary told AFP.

Police had cordoned off the area and were searching for the gunmen and their captive, Bashary and police said.

Bashary could not immediately confirm where the abducted woman worked, and gave no further details about the incident.

The German embassy in Kabul was unable to immediately confirm the incident. In Berlin, the German foreign ministry said it could not immediately comment.

A 12-year-old boy who witnessed the abduction, Abdul Musawir, told AFP he saw a woman being forced into a vehicle.

"A foreign man and woman were crossing the road. A vehicle slowed down and forced the woman into the car," Musawir said.

Deputy Kabul police chief general Zalmai Oriakhail said the couple were husband and wife.

"They have managed to force the woman into their vehicle, they have failed to kidnap the husband," said Oriakhail.

The Taliban and their Al-Qaeda backers have said kidnapping foreigners is a new strategy in their aim of forcing the withdrawal of international troops from the country.

Since being forced from government in late 2001 by a US-led invasion, the Taliban have regrouped in the mountain range that forms the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, establishing bases from which they launch attacks.

A Taliban spokesman said Saturday they were considering the fate of the South Koreans after talks aimed at their release failed, adding that further negotiations seemed unlikely.

"The negotiations have failed. The Taliban leading council is making its decision now on the fate of the hostages," the spokesman, Yousuf Ahmadi, told AFP.

Face-to-face talks between Taliban negotiators and a South Korean delegation in Ghazni, the capital of the province where 23 Korean Christian aid workers were abducted on July 19, ended Thursday with no result, he said.

The Taliban have repeatedly asked for the release of jailed militants in exchange for the hostages' freedom.

"Further talks will not achieve anything -- the Koreans told us that the Americans and the Afghan government are not ready to release our prisoners," he said.

The Taliban freed two women hostages on Monday in what they said was a "gesture of good will". Two men in the group have been murdered, and the Taliban have threatened to shoot more if their demands are not met.

Ahmadi said his group would resume talks only if the South Korean delegation and the Afghan government were ready to discuss a prisoner swap. Seoul has said it is powerless to fulfil the Taliban demand.

A man who identified himself as Rudolph Blechschmidt, a German kidnapped with a colleague on July 18 in Wardak province, told AFP early this week in an interview organised by the insurgents that they wanted to kill him.

The other German man suffered circulatory failure a few days after his capture and was shot dead by his captors.

The Afghan government has said it will not bow to the Taliban demands as doing so would help create a kidnapping industry.

The US-backed government of President Hamid Karzai was heavily criticised, notably by Washington, after it freed five Taliban in March in exchange for an Italian journalist.

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