France drummed up an unprecedented chorus of Arab support for its efforts to save two French reporters held hostage in Iraq today as a deadline neared for Paris to scrap 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 with hours to go before the deadline.
President Jacques Chirac, refusing to back down over the headscarf ban, led a broad diplomatic push to appeal to the militants holding Mr Georges Malbrunot and Mr Christian Chesnot, shown on Arab television yesterday 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 Schroeder. "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 tape broadcast last night, the kidnappers gave France a further 24 hours to repeal its controversial law, which is part of a broader measure aimed at anti-Semitism that bars Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses.
There was uncertainty tonight about when the dealine runs out. An Arab League official said that according to information from some of the league's friends in Iraq, the deadline had been extended 48 hours, not 24 hours as previously reported. "It was our understanding last night that it was 48 hours, which takes it into tomorrow," 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.
The Islamic Army in Iraq, a shadowy militant group, did not specify the fate facing the two men if there was no repeal but the group claimed responsibility for the death of an Italian journalist last week.
On television, Mr Chesnot and Mr Malbrunot, looking calm and in a room flooded with daylight, pleaded for a repeal of the ban. "I call on President Chirac to ... retract the veil ban immediately and I call on French people to protest the veil ban," said Mr Chesnot (37), of Radio France Internationale. "It is a wrong and unjust law and we may die at any time."
Mr Malbrunot (41), who writes for Le Figaroand Ouest France, said: "Our life is in danger and we might die at any moment if the law doesn't get banned.
While French leaders have vowed not to give in, observers saw a glimmer of hope in the deadline extension and the mobilisation of Muslim and Arab opposition to the kidnappings.
Jordan's state news agency Petra quoted King Abdullah as telling Mr Barnier the kingdom would intensify contacts with "relevant Iraqi groups to ensure the release of the hostages".
Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher said after meeting Mr Barnier that Jordan would reach out to Iraqi groups it had contacts with during lengthy negotiations that led to the release of several kidnapped Jordanians.
There was a chorus of disapproval from the Arab world. Mohammad Bahr al-Uloum, a leading Iraqi Shia Muslim cleric, was vehement. "Issues cannot be mixed like this. The headscarf problem in France is no justification for kidnapping of the French journalists. Such terror must be condemned widely," he said.