|
Eight hostages seized as nationwide polls cancelled
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-09-25 11:31
Eight telecom workers became the latest victims of kidnappers determined to
drive foreigners out of Iraq, as Prime Minister Iyad Allawi asked world leaders
to back upcoming elections in Iraq, amid confusion over whether the vote would
take place as scheduled in January.
Eight telecom workers became the latest
victims of kidnappers determined to drive foreigners out of Iraq, as Prime
Minister Iyad Allawi asked world leaders to back upcoming elections in
Iraq.[AFP] | Three people died and 14 were wounded
in an explosion in a central Baghdad square, medics said. The cause of the blast
was not immediately clear.
The blast was in front of a restaurant and a courthouse on the east bank of
the Tigris which flows through the capital.
At the United Nations, Allawi made an impassioned appeal for international
support, particularly in the fight against the terrorists he said were trying to
wreak havoc in Iraq after the ouster of Saddam Hussein a year and a half ago.
"Our struggle is your struggle, our victory will be your victory. And if we
are defeated, it will be your defeat," he said in a speech at UN headquarters.
In Washington, the US State Department number-two said every effort would be
made to ensure that all eligible Iraqi voters take part.
"Is it going to be messy? Yes, it will," Deputy Secretary of State Richard
Armitage said in congressional testimony.
"But it's going to be fair and transparent."
However, Allawi had earlier met with US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld,
who said that more US troops may have to be sent to Iraq to provide security for
elections, and that a vote may not be held in all parts of the country if there
is too much violence.
In Iraq's kidnapping epidemic, the fate of British engineer Kenneth Bigley,
the sole surviving member of a trio of Western hostages threatened with death,
remained unknown, as did that of two Italian women aid workers seized earlier
this month.
Two Egyptian engineers named as Mustafa Abdel Latif and Mahmud Turki, working
for Egyptian telecom giant Orascom, were snatched at gunpoint from their central
Baghdad office late Thursday, an interior ministry spokesman said.
Six other employees of the company -- four Egyptians and two Iraqis -- were
seized near the troubled Syrian border town of Qaim on Wednesday, an expatriate
employee of the company told AFP.
Cairo confirmed the abduction of those four nationals.
The Egyptian mission in Baghdad was in touch with "different circles with
which it has strong ties in order to guarantee the release of the Egyptian
hostages," a statement released in Cairo said.
The abductions were the latest in close to 150 kidnappings of foreigners
reported in Iraq since April. At least two Egyptian hostages have been executed
in recent weeks and two others released.
A video of the 62-year-old Bigley pleading with British Prime Minister Tony
Blair (news - web sites) to meet his Al-Qaeda-linked captors' demands for the
release of Iraqi women prisoners was aired on Thursday but there was still no
word on the Englishman's fate.
A group of Iraqis started distributing 50,000 pamphlets with Bigley's picture
in the upmarket Mansur neighborhood of Baghdad where he was kidnapped last week,
together with two US colleagues.
The Unity and Holy War group of alleged Al-Qaeda operative Abu Mussab
al-Zarqawi -- the most-wanted man in Iraq -- already beheaded the two Americans
after the coalition refused to release the two Iraqi women it detains.
US artillery and aircraft pounded southern sectors of the Sunni Arab
insurgent enclave of Fallujah, residents said.
The military confirmed it had fired artillery at suspected insurgents but
said there were no air strikes.
The US military has intensified strikes on Fallujah this month, targeting
alleged hideouts of Zarqawi.
The city poses the most serious obstacle to the holding of nationwide
elections as planned in January, but the US-backed prime minister was adamant
during meetings with US officials in Washington Thursday that the vote would go
ahead as planned.
"I know that some have speculated, even doubted, whether this date can be
met," Allawi told US lawmakers. "So let me be absolutely clear. Elections will
occur in Iraq on time."
US President George W. Bush acknowledged that "terrorist violence may well
escalate as the January elections draw near" and cautioned the Iraqi government
and its allies against lowering their guard.
But Rumsfeld spelled out US misgivings about the possibility of nationwide
polls as soon as January.
"Let's say you tried to have an election and you could have it in
three-quarters or four-fifths of the country but some places you couldn't,
because the violence was too great. Well, so be it."
US officials in Baghdad have said that contingency plans exist to defer the
polls in the Sunni-dominated province of Al-Anbar, west of Baghdad, where
insurgents effectively control some of the bigger population centers.
Rumsfeld also suggested that US troops could start pulling out of Iraq before
the country is completely stabilized.
"Any implication that that place has to be peaceful and perfect before we can
reduce coalition and US forces would obviously be, I think, unwise, because it
has never been peaceful and perfect, and it isn't likely to be," he said after
meeting Allawi.
| |
 |
|
|
|
|
Today's
Top News |
|
|
|
Top World
News |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
