World

French Hostages Closer To Freedom?

September 3, 2004 / 11:10 AM EDT / CBS/AP

Hopes grew on Thursday for the release of two French journalists held hostage in Iraq, with France's foreign minister saying he received word the men were alive and one of their employers saying the kidnappers handed them over to another group.

Jean de Belot, managing editor of Le Figaro newspaper, said the militants who claimed to be holding the reporters, Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, have handed them over to an Iraqi Sunni Muslim opposition group. He claimed that Iraqi opposition groups favor the release of the hostages.

"That is an extremely positive point," de Belot said on France-Info radio. "But we must be prudent in this kind of mixed-up situation because we know well that until the good news arrives, we can't let ourselves be absolutely reassured."

Malbrunot, 41, reports for the daily Le Figaro and Chesnot, 37, is with Radio France International. They were last heard from on Aug. 19 as they set off for the southern city of Najaf. Their Syrian chauffeur also vanished.

In Amman, Jordan, French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier sounded cautiously optimistic.

"According to the indications which were given to us and we are studying at this moment with caution, Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot are alive, in good health and are being well treated," he said at a news conference.

In other recent developments:

Three Indian truckers returned home Friday after being released by their kidnappers following 42 days of captivity in Iraq. Their kidnappers, who called themselves the "The Holders of The Black Banner," threatened repeatedly to kill them, setting deadlines and changing demands in videos sent to TV channels.

Gunmen ambushed an Associated Press driver Thursday, riddling his car with bullets and killing him near his home in Baghdad. Ismail Taher Mohsin, an Iraqi, was alone in his car when he was attacked at a crossroads in an area where residents had strongly supported the regime of Saddam Hussein, according to police and relatives.

A militant group released video purportedly showing the killing of three Turkish hostages and warning foreigners to leave the country. The video coincided with the discovery by Iraqi police of the bodies of two Turkish citizens and an unidentified man at a rural farm in northern Iraq. It could not immediately be confirmed whether the bodies belonged to the men in the video.

In Fallujah, angry crowds denounced the United States as they mourned the victims of a U.S. airstrike on an alleged militant safehouse that killed 17 people, including three children, and left a gaping six-yard crater. The U.S. military said it had carried out a precision strike late Wednesday on a safehouse in Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, used by followers of al-Zarqawi. Witnesses said the strike hit a residential house in the southern neighborhood of al-Jubail.

Two civilians were killed and another 12 injured during clashes between insurgents and U.S. forces in Ramadi, west of Baghdad, police Lt. Nasir Hussein said.

Two people were killed in a roadside bomb explosion about 45 miles southwest of the northern city of Kirkuk, police Col. Sarhat Qadir said.

In downtown Baghdad, an insurgent threw a hand grenade at a passing police vehicle, injuring one officer and setting the car ablaze. U.S. troops quickly arrived to put out the fire and secure the area.

In Paris, Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin said he hoped the hostage drama would be resolved Friday, the Muslim holy day.

"It is great moment of coming together and of prayer and I want to believe that we can hope for a happy end," he said. "The signs that we have tonight are going in the right direction."

French envoys held crisis talks in Iraq and Jordan on Thursday in a desperate bid to free the reporters.

The hostage-takers demanded that France revoke a law that went into effect on Thursday banning girls from wearing Islamic head scarves in public schools.

A first deadline issued by the militants passed Monday night without incident. A second deadline was issued Tuesday and extended until late Wednesday, but also passed without word of their fate.

Charles Lambroschini, a deputy managing editor at Le Figaro, said the original kidnappers were fundamentalists mostly from overseas and that they had handed the reporters to members of the Iraqi opposition "who favor negotiation."

"So we are optimistic but cautious," he told LCI television.

French Muslim leaders who traveled to Baghdad in an effort to seek the reporters' release said they hoped their appeals were heard.

"We hope that during Friday prayers we will be able to thank God for the release of the Frenchmen and their Syrian driver," Mohammed Bechari, head of the National Federation of French Muslims, said at the news conference in Amman with Barnier.

Using his nation's formidable diplomatic clout, French President Jacques Chirac has made good on a pledge to spare no effort to save the journalists. A special envoy was dispatched to Baghdad this week, and Barnier held emergency, high-level talks in Qatar, Jordan and Egypt.

He won massive support throughout the Arab world, cashing in on France's strong backing for the Palestinians and its anti-war stance in Iraq. Muslim groups — from the militant Islamic Hamas, which claimed responsibility for deadly twin blasts in Israel on Tuesday, to Iraqi Sunni and Shiite religious leaders in Iraq — issued calls on behalf of the French hostages.

But France refused to repeal the new law that bans all conspicuous religious signs and apparel from public schools.

Although the law bans students from wearing the Jewish skull cap and large Christian crosses, it clearly targets head scarves, viewed as a sign of rising Muslim fundamentalism and a threat to modern-day France's secular society.

The group claiming responsibility for the kidnapping, the Islamic Army in Iraq, first made its demands known in a video broadcast Saturday. The group is believed to have killed an Italian freelance journalist last week after Italy's government rejected a demand that it withdraw its 3,000 soldiers in Iraq.