Frantic bid to save French
2004-09-01 20:32
Baghdad - French diplomats met Sunni Muslim clerics on Wednesday in a bid to learn the fate of two French journalists kidnapped by radical Islamists.
But all sides were tight-lipped after the talks about whether or not there had been a breakthrough in the negotiations to free the reporters.
Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, who went missing August 20, are being held by a Sunni militant group - the Islamic Army of Iraq - which is demanding that France rescind
a law banning the Islamic headscarf in state schools.
French ambassador Bernard Bajolet declined to say what transpired in the talks with the Council of the Ulema, an association of Sunni fundamentalist clerics that has helped mediate previous hostage crises in Iraq.
"We cannot give you any news for the moment. We are trying to do everything possible and the council is also doing the maximum," Bajolet said.
For his part, Sheikh Abdel Salam al-Kubeissi, a member of the council, said he had no news for the moment.
Another member Abdel Moneim took a hardline stance on the issue of journalists being kidnapped by the insurgency.
"It is for the resistance fighters to decide what to do with journalists coming from countries supporting or against the war."
"The fighters have their own clerics who can issue decrees based on Islamic law," Moneim said.
Trying to save face
However, the kidnappers are believed to be under considerable pressure from other rebel groups to release the men and are trying to find a way to save face, one expert on the insurgency in told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The Islamic Army of Iraq has claimed responsibility for the murder and mutilation of four US security contractors on March 31, which triggered a US marine offensive on the city.
The organisation is thought to group Iraqi Islamists who lived in the Gulf and returned to Iraq, along with those who never left, the expert told AFP.
"They took these two foreigners on August 20 and then they found out they were French.
"After deciding to free them, the group's hardline faction decided to keep them and pressure France to revoke its law on the veil," the expert said.
But the abductors were then stunned when Muslim groups denounced the kidnapping and they have since fumbled about what to do, the expert said.
Last week, the Islamic Army of Iraq executed an Italian journalist, and it had previously executed two Pakistanis it was holding.
But it has freed a Filipino, whose government caved in to the group's demands for an early withdrawal of Philippine troops from Iraq.
For his part, French foreign minister Michel Barnier told Al-Jazeera satellite television he had hope for the hostages.
Barnier, who had already been to Egypt, Jordan and Qatar to seek their help to free the hostages, said: "I cannot imagine a solution but a positive solution."
He was returning to Jordan on Wednesday night.
- SAPA