World

American Absent From New Hostage Tape

March 8, 2006 / 7:13 AM EST / CBS/AP

Al-Jazeera television on Monday broadcast a 25-second, silent videotape showing three of four hostage Christian Peacemaker activists, and said that the men asked their governments and countries in the Persian Gulf to work for their release. Absent from the tape was the only American among the four captives.

Maxine Nash, a member of the Christian Peacemaker Teams in Baghdad, said the missing man is American Tom Fox, 54, of Clear Brook, Virginia. Those shown on the tape were Canadians James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32; and Norman Kember, 74, of London.

"We do not know what to make of Tom Fox's absence from this video," Christian Peacemaker Teams said in a statement issued at its Chicago headquarters.

The hostages disappeared on Nov. 26 and the previously unknown Swords of Righteousness Brigades had claimed responsibility. The tape broadcast Tuesday carried a Feb. 28 date.

The four were last seen together on a videotape, also broadcast by al-Jazeera, on Jan. 28. It was dated seven days earlier.

In that broadcast, an al-Jazeera newsreader said the hostage-takers issued a statement saying it was the "last chance" for U.S. and Iraqi authorities to "release all Iraqi prisoners in return of freeing the hostages otherwise their fate will be death." No deadline was set.

In other recent developments:

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld rejected suggestions Iraq is engulfed in a civil war but predicted there would be additional "bursts" of sectarian violence in the weeks ahead. Rumsfeld also claimed that Iranian Revolutionary Guard elements had infiltrated Iraq to cause trouble. Rumsfeld also asserted that media reports have exaggerated the violence in Iraq since an attack last month on a revered Shiite mosque touched off a wave of violent reprisals between sects.

Iraq's president Jalal Talabani postponed a decision on when to call the new parliament into session after the dominant Shiite alliance requested a delay to resolve a deadlock over the composition of a new government. A political committee representing the seven Shiite parties that make up the United Iraqi Alliance sent Talabani a letter Tuesday asking him to delay the first session until there is agreement on who should occupy top government positions.

Police say assailants attacked a Sunni mosque in western Baghdad with guns and grenades, killing a guard and torching two rooms.

A roadside bomb targeting a U.S. patrol in another western neighborhood killed one bystander. Two car bombs also exploded almost simultaneously at separate sites in the mostly Shiite city of Hillah, south of Baghdad, wounding at least three people.

Police say four Iraqi officers were killed in two separate attacks on police patrols north of Baghdad.

Gunmen shot and killed a Baghdad International Airport employee as he drove through a southern neighborhood.

Monday, a string of explosions in Baghdad and north of the capital killed at least 16 Iraqis and wounded more than 50.

Also Monday, a U.S. soldier was reported killed in insurgency-plagued western Anbar province, pushing the American military death toll to 2,300 since the beginning of the war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

The German push for a probe into allegations of Germany's involvement in the Iraq war is growing stronger. Germany's biggest opposition party has joined two smaller parties in calling for the investigation. They want to know whether Germany's intelligence agency helped U.S. combat operations – in defiance of the former government's hardline opposition to involvement in Iraq.

The hostage videotape broadcast Tuesday on al-Jazeera showed the three captives sitting in chairs and speaking, although there was no sound. One of those on the tape had white hair and a slight beard, the two others had dark hair and full beards. Its teams host human rights conferences in conflict zones, promoting peaceful solutions.

In its Tuesday statement, the organization said "14,600 Iraqis currently (are) detained illegally by the Multinational Forces in Iraq." Its teams host human rights conferences in conflict zones, promoting peaceful solutions.

Also still held hostage in Iraq is American reporter Jill Carroll, who the Iraqi interior minister has said was being held by the Islamic Army in Iraq, the insurgent group that freed two French journalists in 2004 after four months in captivity.

Bayan Jabr, who is in charge of Iraq's police, also said he believed the 28-year-old freelance reporter for The Christian Science Monitor was still alive, although the deadline set by her captors for the U.S. to meet their demands expired late last month.

Three videotapes provided by the kidnappers to Arab satellite television stations identified the group holding her as the previously unknown "Revenge Brigades." She was seized Jan. 7 in Baghdad and her translator was killed.

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