Everything will be done to secure release, says Chirac

FRANCE: France secured widespread Arab support for its efforts to save two French journalists held hostage in Iraq yesterday…

FRANCE: France secured widespread Arab support for its efforts to save two French journalists held hostage in Iraq yesterday as a deadline neared for Paris to drop a ban on Muslim headscarves in schools.

The killing of 12 Nepali hostages by a separate group of Iraqi militants highlighted the gravity of the reporters' plight. But just hours before the reported deadline expired a senior Arab League official said he believed it had been extended.

President Jacques Chirac, refusing to back down over the headscarf ban, led a broad diplomatic push to appeal to the militants holding Georges Malbrunot and Christian Chesnot, shown on Arab television on Monday fearing for their lives.

"I am renewing my solemn call for their release," said Mr Chirac, in Russia to meet anti-Iraq-war allies Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder.

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"Everything will be done to secure their release."

Foreign Minister Michel Barnier, racing through Middle East capitals, secured pledges of help in Jordan after visiting Cairo as France called in its many favours in the Arab world.

Mr Barnier, who said France was working tirelessly and sometimes in secret to free the hostages, later returned to Egypt, to the city of Alexandria.

In a statement reported by Al Jazeera on Monday evening, the kidnappers gave France a further 24 hours to repeal its controversial law, which also bans Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses in state schools.

The Arab League official said that according to information from some of the league's friends in Iraq, the deadline had been extended by 48 hours, not 24 hours as previously reported.

"It was our understanding last night that it was 48 hours, which takes it into tomorrow (Wednesday evening)," the official said.

The kidnappings stunned France, which opposed the US-led invasion of Iraq and also objected to pre-war sanctions.

Islamic militant group Hamas joined a chorus of groups including French Muslims opposed to the headscarf ban, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and aides to anti-US cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in urging freedom for the journalists.

Mr Dalil Boubakeur, the moderate head of the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM) which represents the Muslim community, said it was ready to send representatives to Baghdad to take part in talks to try to secure the men's release.

The shadowy Islamic Army in Iraq did not specify the fate facing the two men if there was no repeal of the controversial law but the group claimed responsibility for the death of an Italian journalist last week.