France pushes to get hostages freed

France pushes to get hostages freed


Wednesday 01 September 2004, 19:13 Makka Time, 16:13 GMT


Ambassador Bernard Bajolet (R) in Baghdad has thanked the AMS



Related:
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France calls hostage-crisis meeting
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The French ambassador to Iraq has met with leaders of a leading Islamic clerical organisation that has been trying to secure the release of two kidnapped French reporters.


After the talks at the Umm al-Qura mosque in west Baghdad on Wednesday, Ambassador Bernard Bajolet thanked the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS) for condemning the abduction "extremely forcefully, clearly and without ambiguity".

Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot were abducted by a group demanding Paris rescind a ban on the wearing of Islamic headscarves in French public schools.

The pair and their Syrian driver were kidnapped in Najaf on 20 August.

On Tuesday, a spokesman for the AMS made a televised appeal to the hostage-takers to free the Frenchmen, saying the kidnapping was not the correct way to fight the French law.



http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/5846E961-766D-48E3-BDC1-784BE0F0DF65.htm