'Kidnapping' questioned
2005-02-01 17:14
Paris - France's prime minister appeared to suggest on Tuesday that the disappearance of a French reporter in Iraq may not be a simple kidnapping, saying her situation is different from that of two other journalists who were held hostage there.
Jean-Pierre Raffarin's comments to parliament, while cryptic, were more than the government has previously said about what might have happened to Florence Aubenas and her Iraqi translator, who have been missing for nearly a month.
Raffarin differentiated her case from that of Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, two French reporters held hostage for four months by Islamic militants in Iraq and released in December.
"Information we have gathered, which I can share with you today, leads us to think that we find ourselves in a situation very different from the one we knew with Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot," said the prime minister.
Raffarin said that in the interests of Aubenas' safety, he did not want to say more. He did not use the word kidnapping, opting instead for "disappearance".
The government has repeatedly said that it is working discretely to find Aubenas, a veteran correspondent for the daily Liberation, and Hussein Hanoun al-Saadi, her assistant.
They were last seen leaving her Baghdad hotel on January 5.
- AP