Iraq kidnappings hard to stop

An Anglican envoy spearheading the search for hostages in Iraq is urging senior Sunni and Shiite clerics to issue a joint fatwa, or religious edict, forbidding kidnapping.

The call for a fatwa comes amid growing suspicion that kidnappers are selling their foreign hostages to militant Islamic groups, making it almost impossible to trace them.

But coalition forces had a rare breakthrough Tuesday, rescuing three Italian security guards and a Polish contractor. Few details were immediately available, but all four hostages were said to be in good health and there were no casualties during the rescue operation. The Italians were kidnapped on April 12, along with a fourth colleague who was later executed. The Pole was abducted last week.

About 20 foreigners are being held hostage in Iraq and, according to Andrew White, canon of Coventry Cathedral in England and director of the International Center for Reconciliation, abductions show little sign of ending.

"Our information gathering makes us quite certain that these groups are handing on their hostages," he said in an interview.

Canon White, also an adviser to the US-run Coalition Provisional Authority, believes that the kidnappings are becoming more organized and structured.

"If lightweights have hostages, they know they can sell them on to Al Qaeda-type groups," he says. "This will really complicate things for us because these groups have little respect even for the Islamic authorities."

Last week, several mortar rounds targeted the Italian Embassy in Baghdad, killing two passersby. A day earlier, a videotape of the three Italian hostages was aired on the Arabic Al Jazeera TV station. Also last week, two Italian diplomats were wounded in Baghdad in an unreported attack.

Canon White says that the incidents were deliberately timed to coincide with the visit to Italy by President Bush. "This orchestrated method [of] targeting the Italians when Bush goes to Italy demonstrates that there's a highly skilled operator behind what's happening," he says.

Up to 40 foreigners were kidnapped during a spate of abductions in early April when US forces laid siege to the Sunni flash-point town of Fallujah and fought a Shiite uprising in the south. Several hostages were executed, including Nicholas Berg, an US engineer whose videotaped decapitation, US authorities believe, was carried out by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian Islamic militant blamed for much of the violence in Iraq.

Although most of the hostages subsequently were released, the kidnappings have continued at a steady rate. In the past week alone, three foreigners have been snatched, a Turk, an Egyptian, and the Pole who was freed Tuesday.

A regular visitor to Iraq for seven years and an experienced troubleshooter in the Middle East, Canon White is using his relationships with key Sunni and Shiite clerics in the hope that their combined moral authority can persuade kidnappers to free their hostages.

But his team has only had one success so far, winning the release of Nabil Razouk, an Israeli-Arab from East Jerusalem who worked with the US Agency for International Development and was kidnapped on April 7.

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