The tribesmen sent cousins of Abdullah Mehsud, the leader of the kidnappers, to fetch him for talks, but were unable to find him, one of the cousins, Alam Zeb, reported back to the meeting.
"We waited for him for a long time, but the meeting could not take place," he said.
However, Zeb said the cousins had made contact with three of Abdullah's supporters and had agreed to send elders to meet him on Tuesday night, who would report to the council on Wednesday.
Abdullah told AFP on Tuesday that he had refused to meet a council of tribal elders.
He said he would not negotiate unless his men holding the Chinese engineers were allowed to leave their beseiged base with the hostages.
"I will not hold any negotiations with the Jirga unless the Chinese are allowed to travel to my place without any threat," he told AFP from an undisclosed location.
"I have not met anyone for the purpose of negotiation today," he said.
The elders reached Mahsud's hideout after midday on Tuesday only to be told that the militant leader would not speak to them until his demands are met by the government, a local official said.
Engineers Wang Ende and Wang Peng, who were working on a dam project, have been held since Saturday in South Waziristan, where hundreds of people have been killed this year in battles between troops and al Qaeda-linked militants.
The kidnappers were demanding an end to military operations in the semi-autonomous tribal region and the freeing of two Uzbek al Qaeda militants, officials have said.
Negotiations for the release of the two engineers and two Pakistanis held with them had continued beyond deadlines set by the kidnappers on Monday, officials said.
"I am hopeful for some peaceful settlement," Mehmood Shah, chief of security for the tribal belt, told Reuters.
"(But) we have all the options, including the use of force. It's a war of nerves. He will not find us wanting on this count," he said, referring to Abdullah.
The kidnappers, with explosives strapped to their bodies, have been holed up in a mud house surrounded by security forces and their tribal allies in the Chagmalai area of South Waziristan.
Abdullah, who was freed from the US prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba in March and calls himself Commander Abdullah, threatened on Monday to order the killing of one of the Chinese unless they and the kidnappers were allowed to join him in a nearby area.
Officials said there were four or five kidnappers, at least two of whom appeared to be Arabs, and they had threatened to blow up themselves and their hostages if any rescue attempt was made.
Hundreds of foreign militants, including Uzbeks, Chechens and Arabs, are thought to be holed up in the tribal region, protected by tribesmen.
Elders from Abdullah's Mehsud tribe telephoned him on Monday and warned him the tribe as a whole would suffer unless he freed the hostages and that he would face tribal justice, said Brigadier Mehmood Shah.
"We are still considering options, including the use of force," Shah said late on Monday. "We are operating via various channels, that is why we are confident no harm will come to the engineers and I remain optimistic."
The hostages were in the same room as the kidnappers but no explosives were attached to the captives, China's official Xinhua news agency quoted NWFP Governor Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah as telling Chinese diplomats on Monday.