Foreign workers urged to quit Iraq amid a continuing wave of kidnappings and violence by UN News / New York Times / Reuters /SBS World News 2:46pm 14th Apr, 2004   April 16, 2004. (ABC News)    Australian, Japanese hostages free after Iraq ordeal", by ABC correspondents.    Japanese television is showing pictures of the three civilians sitting in the headquarters of the Committee of Muslim Scholars in Baghdad. They appear relaxed and relieved. A member of the committee says they are in good health.    A Japanese Government Foreign Ministry official confirmed the three are under protection in Iraq. "They are in good shape," the unnamed official said. The two aid workers - Noriaki Imai, 18 and Nahoko Takato, 34 - and photojournalist Soichiro Koriyama were taken hostage last week.    Their captors had threatened to kill them unless Japan withdrew its troops from Iraq.There have been emotional scenes in Tokyo, after the release of the three hostages.The families of the hostages have spent one week worrying about their loved ones. When told that the trio had been released, the families screamed with excitement, burst into tears and thanked their supporters.    The Japanese Government has also welcomed the news, and reiterating that it will not withdraw its troops from Iraq. Meanwhile, two other Japanese civilians have since gone missing in Iraq. Their fate is not known.    The three released Japanese civilians freed will be flown to Dubai on Friday to meet with Japan's Senior Vice Foreign Minister Ichiro Aisawa, the Foreign Ministry said..    A Sunni Muslim group which has successfully negotiated the release of French and Japanese hostages being held in Iraq says the case of the Italian hostages is more complicated.Three Italians remain in custody after a fourth hostage was executed by his captors yesterday.    A spokesman for the Muslim committee of scholars, Mohammed al Faizi, says the problem with the Italians was that their country had occupation forces in Iraq and that they worked as security guards with occupation forces.    Fabrizio Quattrocchi, one of the four, was shot in front of a camera at point blank range and the film sent to the Al Jazeera network with a demand for an apology for anti-Muslim remarks made by the Italian Prime Minister and an immediate withdrawal of Italian troops.The note said the remaining three would be executed one by one until that happened.    Mr al Faizi says Islam rejected using innocent people as a means of extortion and his committee had published an appeal to free all prisoners who can prove they have no relationship with the forces of occupation.    An Australian woman who was abducted in Iraq says she feared for her life because of the Australian Government's support for the war in the country. Donna Mulhearn had been distributing aid in Fallujah when she was taken hostage by militiamen. She was released unharmed about 20 hours later.    Ms Mulhearn says she was only let go after convincing her kidnappers that she was in the country to help the Iraqi people."They wanted to know why we were in Fallujah, what we were doing in Iraq and they asked me many, many questions about the political situation in Australia, why Australia was involved in the war in Iraq," she said.    "I really felt I had to answer for my Government's actions and I felt really that put me in quite a bit of danger." Ms Mulhearn also says initially she held grave fears for her safety. "It was a bit hairy at first of course when they got out the rocket propelled grenades and the machine guns and pointed them in our faces and it was awkward because they didn't know who we were," she said. "We didn't know who they were so there was a few moments there where you just don't know what they're going to do."    A French journalist kidnapped on Sunday has now been released. Alexandre Jordanov was in good health after his ordeal, French officials said..    April 15, 2004. (ABC News)    "Foreigners' exodus cripples Iraq reconstruction".    An exodus of foreigners triggered by the rebel campaign of hostage-taking would deal a heavy blow to billions of dollars in United States-led coalition plans to rebuild Iraq.    Iraqi industrialists and businessmen are dismayed to learn that Russia will begin to evacuate those among the more than 800 former Soviet citizens working for Moscow's contractors in Iraq, who want to leave the war-torn country. Russia's top contractor in Iraq, the Technoprom energy firm, has said that all of its 370 employees would leave Iraq. The move comes after armed men briefly kidnapped nine people working for another Russian firm in Baghdad, amid a spate of foreigner abductions.    Bassim Anton, an executive with the Iraqi Federation of Industry, says "the provision of electricity in Iraq depends primarily on the Russians, who work in many power plants...Only the Russians can rehabilitate them," he said..Iraqi engineers are able to carry out maintenance, but they do not have the skill or the experience to make heavy equipment." Electrical power is essential to every facet of industrial life, such as the irrigation of crops, waste water treatment and oil refineries.    Businessman Natif Ali says that in the years after sanctions were slapped on Iraq following its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, "private companies had no contact with foreigners.. Our technology, which dates back to before 1990, is under-developed."    Coalition officials have said that around 40 foreigners from 12 countries are now being held hostage.. US Marine Captain Bruce Cole, who works with the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) contract management office, said "we know there are security problems. It has impacted on the schedule of reconstruction...It may cost money, but it's important not to stop, as building is giving work to Iraqi contractors, suppliers and workers," he said.    -- AFP    14.4.2004. (SBS World News)    Foreign workers have been urged to leave Iraq amid a continuing wave of kidnappings and violence across the country. The warnings, issued by a number of governments as private companies also review their positions in Iraq, came as about 40 hostages from at least 12 countries were being held.    On Tuesday a French journalist became the latest kidnapping victim, while coalition spokesman Dan Senor said the US Federal Bureau of Investigation was investigating the rash of abductions. However, Mr Senor reiterated there would be no negotiations with kidnappers pressing for the withdrawal of foreign troops. He said: "We’re making it clear that there will be no negotiations with hostage-takers and... that it is everyone's interest that these hostages be released as expeditiously as possible."    Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television earlier broadcast videotape of four Italian hostages sitting in a room surrounded by masked and heavily armed militia fighters. "The Iraqi resistance has detained four Italians and demands the Italian government pull its troops from Iraq," it reported, three days after Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi visited Italian troops in the country.    France has followed Germany in issuing a formal warning urging its citizens to leave, calling the kidnappings "unacceptable". The British Foreign Office said it continued to advise against all but the most essential travel to Iraq. Russia's biggest contractor in Iraq, Tekhpromexport, is pulling its 370 staff out of Iraq amid security concerns.    Iraqi civil and religious leaders have condemned the kidnappings and called for the hostages to be released but their appeals seem to have had little impact on some militants intent on testing the will of US allies..    Most of Washington's coalition partners insisted military personnel would stay put, but New Zealand said it would bring its 61 army engineers home if the security situation confined them to base for too long.    14 April , 2004     "Foreign contractors leave Iraq amid hostage crisis"    (ABC News: AM - Reporter: Fran Kelly)    FRAN KELLY: The US military puts the latest count of foreign hostages in Iraq at 40 – contractors, journalists, and aid workers from 12 different countries held by an assortment of Iraqi militant groups. Hundreds of civilians are being pulled out, as governments from France, Germany, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Portugal, and Russia advise their citizens it's no longer safe.    And some are even allowing their soldiers to leave, Bulgaria declaring its 480 troops free to go home if they wish. But others are holding firm – the Italian government resisting pressure to pull out its troops even though four of its citizens were the latest hostages to be paraded on Arab television.    ITALY FOREIGN AFFAIRS SPOKESPERSON: Well, our response will be to do everything that is reasonable to do to get the hostages back, but of course we cannot give way, we cannot give up in front of the blackmail from the terrorists.    FRAN KELLY: But the exodus of European contractors will put pressure on the British Government, which is doing its best to appear calm in the face of the spiralling violence. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw says the situation in Iraq is the inevitable result of lifting the lid off the pressure cooker caused by Saddam Hussein's reign of terror, a theory rejected by Professor Fred Halliday, Middle East specialist with the London School of Economics.    FRED HALLIDAY: A pressure cooker has been created by the way in which the United States has mishandled the political process, and by very mistaken militaristic responses to the security situation.    We can see this today in the ludicrous press conferences being given by American military officials in Iraq, who are talking about wiping out or finishing off opposition groups who they've not got the slightest possibility of finishing off, any more than they had a chance of finishing off the NLF in Vietnam back in the seventies.    FRAN KELLY: There's now 40 foreign hostages from 12 different countries been taken in Iraq. At least four governments have urged their citizens to leave Iraq. Do you think the taking of hostages is likely to trigger the disintegration of the international coalition on the ground?    FRED HALLIDAY: First of all it will clear out all the NGOs and the contractors and make life much more difficult for the Americans in practical terms. I mean, you're not going to be bringing in Filipino drivers to drive fuel trucks if they're going to get hit by an RPG every time they go down the street.    A lot of people will get scared. But yes, it will also undermine the coalition. The coalition is weak at the moment: the Poles want to go home, the Spaniards want to go home, the Ukrainians ran away, and some of the others we don't mention. Meanwhile the army and the police have mutinied.    13 April 2004    "Annan says insecurity prevents return of large UN team to Iraq". (UN News)    Despite having its movements restricted as a result of the deteriorating security environment in Iraq, the United Nations mission led by Special Adviser Lakhdar Brahimi continued to consult with a wide range of Iraqi constituencies today, although Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he did not anticipate the return of a large UN team in the "foreseeable future."    Speaking to reporters upon returning to work at UN Headquarters in New York, Mr. Annan said the deteriorating situation and violence in Iraq have made the work of the UN team on the ground difficult.    "For the foreseeable future, insecurity is going to be a major constraint for us and so I cannot say right now that I'm going to be sending in a large UN team," he said. "Obviously, we are monitoring the situation very closely and we are doing the best we can and I will have a better sense when Mr. Brahimi is back and we reassess the situation."    The Secretary-General added that governments are also aware that "it is in our collective interest to do everything we can to bring the violence down in Iraq," and that he hoped the situation could calm down before the transfer of power planned for 30 June.    Asked if that deadline was still credible, Mr. Annan said it would be difficult for it to be changed. "It has been embraced by the Iraqis themselves, who are anxious to see the end of occupation as soon as possible," he said.    "That having been said, I hope we are going to be able to bring down the violence and control the situation between now and then because the kind of violence we are seeing on the ground is not conducive for that sort of political process and transition," he said.    April 15, 2004    "Kerry urges President Bush to share responsibility with U.N. in Iraq", by Davis M. Halbfinger. (The New York Times).    US Senator John Kerry urged President Bush yesterday to share responsibility for Iraq with the United Nations, saying the administration's "stubborn" insistence on controlling the reconstruction there was costing Americans money and lives.    "We shouldn't only be tough, we have to be smart," Mr. Kerry said at a news conference in Harlem in which he directly responded to Mr. Bush's on Tuesday. "And there's a smarter way to accomplish this mission than this president is pursuing." Mr. Kerry said Mr. Bush ought to "just come out and say, `I want the United Nations to be a full partner,' " and offer to turn over civil authority in Iraq. "That's the argument right now," he said. "Whether or not we're prepared to turn the authority over, whether they're prepared to come in without the authority. That's the fight. And the question is why the president won't do that."    Mr. Kerry asked why Lakhdar Brahimi, a United Nations special envoy, was charged only with handling the transition of government authority "and not the reconstruction and not the full authority for the transformation of government."    Baghdad. April 13, 2004    "Hostage crisis worsens in Iraq" by Paul McGeough (The Age.)    A fragile ceasefire was extended as mediators sought to end a week of fierce clashes in Fallujah, but insurgents stepped up their taking of foreign hostages with seven Chinese abducted and the lives of three Japanese still at risk.    Sporadic gunfire interrupted the truce, but Fallujah was relatively calm after a week of bloodshed that left more than 600 Iraqis dead and 1000 wounded in the city west of Baghdad.    US-led forces faced a mixed picture yesterday after a week in which the year-old US-led occupation was embroiled in widespread fighting with Sunni and Shiite insurgents and jolted by the wave of kidnappings of foreign civilians.    Near Baghdad, gunmen shot down a US attack helicopter, killing two crew members. The Americans also signalled a delay in the operation to "eliminate" the Mahdi Army of the radical Shiite cleric Sheikh Muqtada al-Sadr that last week overran key cities in the south.    Despite claims in Fallujah - effectively a no-go zone for foreign reporters - that many of the Iraqis who died were women, children and the aged, the US insisted most of the dead were fighters.    The director of Fallujah's general hospital, Rafie Al-Issawi, told reporters that the estimate of 600 was based on the number of bodies received at four clinics in the town and reports of the dead being buried at sports fields and in people's homes...    Gunmen have run rampant in the Abu Ghraib district west of Baghdad for three days, attacking fuel convoys, killing a US soldier and two American civilians and kidnapping another American. The captors of Thomas Hamill, an American who works for a US contractor in Iraq, had threatened to kill and burn him unless US troops ended their assault on Fallujah by 6am yesterday. The deadline passed with no word on Mr Hamill's fate...    The dangers to foreign civilians were further underscored yesterday when Germany said that two of its missing nationals were probably dead. A presumed American citizen, a Canadian aid worker and a group of 40 foreigners are also reportedly kidnapped in Iraq. The demands of the kidnappers are similar: that governments in the countries from which the hostages come should withdraw from Fallujah and or Iraq.    The violence and hostage-taking has brought reconstruction and humanitarian work in Iraq to a halt. It is also making it almost impossible for UN teams negotiating the shape of the new government - to which the US insists it will return sovereignty on June 30 - to operate...    The killings in Fallujah and in other centres in the past week have put the predominantly returned-exiles of the Iraqi Governing Council in an impossible position. They already suffer from a huge lack of credibility in the eyes of Iraqis because they were appointed by the US, not elected by Iraqis. Often branded collaborators, they would risk the death squads if they did not speak out against Iraqi deaths.    - with agencies    April 13, 2004 (Reuters).    Eight Russian Firm Workers released in Iraq.    Moscow. (Reuters) - Eight workers from a Russian engineering firm who were abducted at gunpoint from their villa in Iraq on Monday night have been released, the head of their company said on Tuesday. Three of the workers were Russians and the other five Ukrainian nationals. They were abducted on Monday night at their villa after returning from work....    Chinese hostages have been released.    Seven Chinese hostages have been released and are "fine" in a safe location in Iraq, Xu Jiang, second secretary at the Chinese embassy in Baghdad, says."They were released this evening. They are fine," Mr Jiang said. "They are kept in a safe location and I think that they will soon go home, but I cannot give more details on that."    Baghdad. April 12, 2004    "U.S. Military says about 70 Troops, 700 Insurgents killed in April", by Sewell Chan and William Branigin. (Washington Post Foreign Service)    About 70 troops in the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq have been killed so far this month in combat that has also claimed the lives of about 700 Iraqi insurgents, the top U.S. military spokesman said Monday.    In a news conference, Brig Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the deputy director of coalition operations in Iraq, said there was no reliable figure for Iraqi civilian casualties in the latest fighting..    He spoke as talks resumed in Fallujah between local Iraqi leaders and a delegation from the Iraqi Governing Council on a truce in the city 35 miles west of Baghdad. A U.S. Marine statement said the truce had been broken Sunday and overnight by "enemy fire" and that Marines returned fire, inflicting "a significant number of enemy dead" and detained about 20 insurgents.    "The coalition casualties since April 1 run about 70 personnel," Kimmitt said. He said casualties "inflicted on the enemy" were "somewhere about 10 times that amount. . . ."    Kimmitt said "there is no reliable, authoritative figure" on civilian casualties. Once Fallujah is brought back under control, he said, the Iraqi ministry of health would be asked to "get a fair, honest and credible figure..    Insurgents have repeatedly attacked military convoys, commercial trucks and passenger vehicles on two major highways that run west and south from the Iraqi capital over the past week, slowing the movement of troops and supplies and rendering both highways off-limits to most foreigners, U.S. military commanders said Monday..
	Next (more recent) news item
	Next (older) news item