Iraqi Kidnappers Extend Deadline for French Hostages

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From the article: Thousands of people took to France's streets to demonstrate on Monday and Foreign Minister Michel Barnier visited Egypt as part of a mission to rally support in Iraq and the region.

He made an impassioned plea to the Islamic Army in Iraq to free the journalists.

The militant group, which last week said it had killed Italian journalist Enzo Baldoni, on Saturday gave the French government 48 hours to rescind the headscarf ban, without saying what would happen to the two Frenchmen if it failed to comply.

Will the French government back down?

The crisis stunned France, which campaigned against the 2003 invasion of Iraq and so had considered itself relatively safe from militant attack. France also opposed the 1990-2003 economic sanctions on Iraq.

Perhaps this is as good example of any in what we're dealing with in Iraq. These savages who kidnapped these journalists don't care at all what France did in the past.

Protests were held across Paris against the kidnappings while French diplomats explored possible solutions.


"Their kidnapping is incomprehensible to all those who know that France ... is a land of tolerance and of respect for others," Barnier said, before meeting Arab League chief Amr Moussa and Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit.

I don't understand quite why the French government would be surprised. They're not dealing with reasonable people. Sad day, sad situation. Although the French have basically have been opposed to U.S. interests it's a tragedy nonetheless. Hopefully the hostages will be released unharmed and it will be interesting to see if France concedes.

Kidnappers Extend Deadline for French Hostages

Kidnappers Extend Deadline for French Hostages

27 minutes ago Add Top Stories - Reuters to My Yahoo!


By Heba Kandil

DUBAI (Reuters) - Militants holding two French journalists hostage in Iraq (news - web sites) gave France another 24 hours on Monday to agree to their demands and scrap a ban on Muslim headscarves in schools, Al Jazeera reported.

The Arabic TV station showed a tape of the two journalists urging the French people to hold protests to persuade their government to retract the headscarf law or they might be killed.

The kidnappers gave the French government one more day to overturn the ban after a previous 48-hour deadline expired on Monday, Al Jazeera said, quoting a written statement.

France has scrambled to save Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, both of whom spoke on the video tape.

"I call on President (Jacques) Chirac to ... retract the veil ban immediately and I call on French people to protest the veil ban. It is a wrong and unjust law and we may die at any time," Chesnot said, according to Al Jazeera's translation into Arabic.


Thousands of people took to France's streets to demonstrate on Monday and Foreign Minister Michel Barnier visited Egypt as part of a mission to rally support in Iraq and the region.


He made an impassioned plea to the Islamic Army in Iraq to free the journalists.


The militant group, which last week said it had killed Italian journalist Enzo Baldoni, on Saturday gave the French government 48 hours to rescind the headscarf ban, without saying what would happen to the two Frenchmen if it failed to comply.


"We will continue, come what may, to follow all contacts ... with civil and religious personalities to explain the reality of the French republic ... and obtain the release of these people," Barnier said in Cairo.


Iraqi Sunni and Shi'ite Muslim groups and Islamic groups outside Iraq urged the kidnappers to release the two, noting France's opposition to the U.S.-led Iraq war and saying journalists were not combatants.


The crisis stunned France, which campaigned against the 2003 invasion of Iraq and so had considered itself relatively safe from militant attack. France also opposed the 1990-2003 economic sanctions on Iraq.


Chesnot, of Radio France Internationale, and Malbrunot, who writes for the dailies Le Figaro and Ouest France, disappeared on Aug. 20 on their way from Baghdad to Najaf, the day after Baldoni was seized.


PARIS PROTESTS


Protests were held across Paris against the kidnappings while French diplomats explored possible solutions.


"Their kidnapping is incomprehensible to all those who know that France ... is a land of tolerance and of respect for others," Barnier said, before meeting Arab League chief Amr Moussa and Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit.


"I urge everyone who has power, or has the capabilities, to set the journalists free as soon as possible so that the situation does not become more complicated," Moussa said.


Aboul Gheit also called for the hostages to be released.





Many Muslim women in headscarves joined French protests for their freedom. Some 200 people took to the streets of eastern Strasbourg and about 3,000 demonstrated in Paris.

"The hostage-taking risks making public opinion in France turn against women and girls who wear headscarves," one of the veiled protesters in Paris said in front of the headquarters of Radio France Internationale, Chesnot's employer.

Barnier said Foreign Ministry Secretary-General Hubert Colin de Verdiere arrived in Baghdad on Monday for crisis talks. Barnier is expected to visit Amman and Qatar, but not Iraq.

Islamic groups in Iraq sympathized with the French.

"France's position toward Iraq is good. But we also are against kidnapping all journalists," said Sheikh Abdel Sattar Abdel Jabbar, a top official in the Muslim Clerics Association. "We call on the kidnappers to release them immediately."

SYMPATHY FOR THE FRENCH

Outside Iraq, Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, the Arab world's largest Islamist organization, and the Federation of Arab Journalists spoke out against the kidnapping.

Cairo's prestigious Sunni seat of learning, al-Azhar, and Lebanon's top Shi'ite cleric Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah also condemned the action.

Al Jazeera, which has regularly broadcast similar tapes of hostages, said all kidnapped journalists should be released.

"This clearly means a call for the immediate release of the French journalists held hostage," Al Jazeera spokesman Jihad Ballout said.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder offered a word of caution about efforts to free them, saying: "The more it's dealt with in public, the less chance there will be to resolve the crisis."

French critics and defenders of the ban on headscarves in schools united in support of the law on Monday, pledging to stand firm against the kidnappers. France passed the law in March in reaction to the growing influence of Islamist activists and tensions between Muslim and Jewish youths in schools. The law also bans Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses.

Leaders of France's five-million strong Muslim community have denied any link with the militant Islamic Army in Iraq.

Fouad Alaoui, secretary-general of an Islamic group that had previously urged schoolgirls to defy the ban, recommended on Monday they refrain from flouting the law. The French government said there was no question of the ban being revoked. (Additional reporting by Amil Khan, Joelle Diderich, Khaled Yacoub Oweis, Mariam Karouny)

[Boris]

Why do you think the French will back down? I know we like to make jokes about France but the reality is that they have been very effective in dealing with terrorists. If you look at the number of terror attacks on French soil I think it compares quite favorably with other Western European countries and the U.S.

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Although the French have basically have been opposed to U.S. interests it's a tragedy nonetheless.

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Interesting comment. How has France been opposed to U.S. interests?

[wacki]

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Interesting comment. How has France been opposed to U.S. interests?

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I'm guessing you didn't watch CSPAN during the UN debates before the war.

Or payed attention to the UN scandal, or listened to Chirac for the last 4 years, or ....

Normally I put hard data and post links, but I'm just going to tell you to google.


France has neither winter, nor summer, nor morals. France is miserable because it is filled with Frenchmen, and Frenchmen are miserable because they live in France.

-Mark Twain


"What do you expect from a culture and a nation that exerted more of its national will fighting against Disney World and Big Macs than against the Nazis?"
- Dennis Miller

Normally I don't like to generalize large groups of people like this, but given their long history, I just can't help it.

[Cyrus]

"How has France been opposed to U.S. interests?" France is miserable because it is filled with Frenchmen, and Frenchmen are miserable because they live in France.

Your comment is all too revealing of the depth of your ignorance. You ask us to google? How about you yahoo?

You ask us to examine the French policy towards the US "for the last 4 years"? Vraiment?! Would you happen to know if, as we speak, French soldiers are fighting side by side with American soldiers in Afghanistan and getting maimed and killed in the process? They are, as a matter of fact. (And pardon if, by the by, the French and personally Chirac have proven to be 100% correct in what they were saying and warning y'all before Dubya plunged in head first into the stupid quagmire that is Iraq.)

But I'm sure none of this registers in your selective, neo-con mind.

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If I was worried about getting attacked by terrorists (which I'm not) I would rather live in France or Canada than the US.

BTW I am sick of hearing people called 'savages' and other similar names as if they had no agenda, as if their only goal were brutality and murder, as if they had no strategic goals or consciousness. Yes, I think they are abhorrent, ignorant, provincial idiots. Yes, I would gladly shoot such a person if he stepped into my life and I were the kind of person who owned a gun. But simply calling them 'savages' won't simplify the problem. I hope you have just picked this up from listening to too much Michael Savage and Bill O'Reilly.

NT

EDIT: And by the way, thousands of Americans didn't demonstrate when Daniel Pearl got his throat slit. We've never displayed this kind of involvement. Do you think that has anything to do with it?

[wacki]

Oui Vraiment!

Ok, your right about the french fighting in afghanistan.
I forgot about that, and they do deserve respect for that. But seriously did you not watch CSPAN during the UN negotiations? It was unreal.

I never would of imagined people could act like that. It got so bad that the french ambassador, I forget his name, would come out and talk in English and then only answer questions in french from french reporters.
And no, Chirac and the French haven't been proven 100% correct. They denied the Iraq's trip to Niger for yellowcake, which the 9/11 commission and the brits found to be true.
The French also bypassed the food for oil program and created a billion dollar blackmarket against UN sanctions.
There are plenty of other instances where they blatantly screwed us, and the UN, in the back.
Last I heard, Chirac is still doing it with UN troop deployments.
And maybe, I know it's far fetched, but just maybe, if France hadn't given Saddam 7 Billion dollars, and violated UN sanctions, Saddam wouldn't have the cash to fund his regime we wouldn't be in this mess.

It's almost 3 AM and I still have a 100 lines of code to chug out, and a meeting at 9 AM. I'm tired and lazy right now, so I will only post this semi-respectable link:

Maxim on France

I know there are good people in that country. The troops in Afghanistan prove it. But considering their history, recent and for the last 100 years, they have alot of explaining to do.


P.S. That quote was Mark Twain, not me.

But since you liked the last one so much, heres one more:

"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without an accordion. All you do is leave behind a lot of noisy baggage."

Want to guess who said it? Google it! Yahoo has a lousy spider, good translater, but lousy spider.

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I'm tired and lazy right now, so I will only post this semi-respectable link:


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HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HA.

NT

And that quote is that General guy, Norman Schwartzkof or whatever.

[wacki]

"I would rather have a German division in front of me than a French one behind me." ---General George S. Patton


"As far as I'm concerned, war always means failure"

---Jacques Chirac, President of France

"As far as France is concerned, you're right."

---Rush Limbaugh

~~~

"The only time France wants us to go to war is when the German Army is sitting in Paris sipping coffee." ---Regis Philbin

~~~

"I don't know why people are surprised that France won't help us get Saddam out of Iraq.

After all, France wouldn't help us get the Germans out of France!" ---Jay Leno

~~~

War without France would be like... ...World War II

~~~

What do you call 100,000 Frenchmen with their hands up? The Army.

~~~

Q: Why are all the boulevards in France lined with trees?
A: Because the Germans LOVE to march in the shade.

~~~

"We can count on the French to be there when they need us."

~~~

"The last time the French asked for 'more proof' it came marching into Paris under a German flag." ---David Letterman

[wacki]

Here's another quote.

"Who unties France from the tree and helps her find her panties every time the Germans are done with her?
America, that’s who. Our reward?
A nonstop stream of lip-sneering, cigarette-waving, mime-walking-a-dog snobbery. Time to return le favor."

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