KABUL, Afghanistan – Terrorists released a video yesterday showing three frightened foreign U.N. hostages pleading for their release and threatened to kill them unless United Nations’ and British troops leave Afghanistan and Muslim prisoners are freed from American jails.

In the tape, the hostages – Annetta Flanigan of Northern Ireland, Filipino diplomat Angelito Nayan, and Shqipe Habibi of Kosovo – are shown sitting hunched together against the bare wall of a room in an undisclosed location. The three answered questions from someone who is speaking to them in broken English from off-camera.

Both women are crying, but the trio look healthy and unharmed.

The Iraq-style abduction could put a brake on the country’s post-Taliban recovery and overshadow the crowning of American favorite Hamid Karzai as its first democratically elected president. The three, who helped organize the October 9 election, were snatched from a U.N. vehicle on a busy Kabul street last Thursday.

In the video, obtained by Associated Press Television News in Pakistan, the questioner repeatedly asks the captives why they have come to Afghanistan, then asks why America and NATO have sent troops to Afghanistan and Iraq.

“We have nothing to do with America,” Mr. Nayan says calmly. “We are here for the Afghan people.” He adds later: “We all want to go home to our families. We are United Nations workers. We want to go home to our kids and to our parents.”

Ms. Habibi explains that she is from Kosovo – the mainly Muslim autonomous region of Serbia – but her abductor seems unsure where that is.

“It is a Muslim country,” she says. “I thought I could help a Muslim country, and I just want to go home and see my brother.” All three hostages appear frightened. Their interviewer at several points seems to try to reassure them, saying to Ms. Flanigan: “Don’t cry. Why you cry?”

But he repeatedly – sometimes sharply – asks them what they are doing in Afghanistan, and does not seem to understand their answers.

Toward the end of the 15-minute video the interviewer appears to ask Ms. Flanigan to cry for the camera, to which she replies: “I have cried and cried and I can’t cry anymore.”

Finally, after 15 minutes, Mr. Nayan asks: “Are we going to be released?” and the tape ends.

Mr. Karzai, the country’s interim leader, released a statement saying he spoke with Prime Minister Blair on Saturday and that they “strongly condemned the hostage situation.”

“This war is against the Afghan nation and we know who will win,” Mr. Karzai said, without indicating how the governments would respond to the crisis.

A Taliban splinter group called Jaish-al Muslimeen, or Army of Muslims, claimed responsibility for the abduction. Ishaq Manzoor, a spokesman for the little-known group, said yesterday that the hostages would be executed in three days if their demands were not met.

“The Afghan government and their foreign masters would be responsible if we got rid of the hostages,” he said by phone from an unknown location.

However, the group’s leader, Akbar Agha, insisted in a separate phone call that it had set no deadline.

U.N. spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva said the world body was “relieved” the hostages were unharmed and appealed for their immediate release.