|
Hostages: Minister flies out
13/09/2004 09:19 - (SA)
Rome - Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini left Rome on Monday for the Middle East in a new bid to win the release of two young Italian women kidnapped in Iraq, his ministry said.
Frattini was due to make a first stop in Kuwait.
The trip comes a day after an Islamist website published an ultimatum threatening to kill the two women if Italy did not withdraw its troops from Iraq within 24 hours.
The threat was signed by a group calling itself the Islamic Jihad Organisation in Iraq.
The group was the second so far to claim it was holding aid workers Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, both 29, since they were seized along with two Iraqis at their Baghdad office last Tuesday.
However no pictures of either woman have so far been shown.
On Sunday, Italian Deputy Prime Minister Gianfranco Fini flatly rejected the ultimatum, while expressing doubts about its authenticity.
"The degree of credibility is still very low," he told reporters.
"It is obvious that we cannot give in to blackmail, but this ultimatum appears to have been launched to divide political forces and the Italian people, whereas the only response to terrorism is for all to stand united."
In Italy itself, tens of thousands of people have demonstrated for the release of Pari and Torretta, who were working for the charity "A Bridge for Baghdad", while city authorities have hung giant pictures of the women, and two Iraqis seized along with them, on public buildings.
- SAPA
|
News
