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Thursday, July 08, 2004
Arroyo mulls military pullout demand amid Iraq kidnapping (10:30 a.m.)
MANILA - President Arroyo called an emergency cabinet meeting Thursday to discuss the case of a Filipino worker reportedly taken hostage by militants demanding the withdrawal of Philippine soldiers and police from Iraq.
Officials said it was possible the hostage shown on Arab television was not even a Filipino, but just the same Arroyo announced measures to stop any more Filipinos going to Iraq to work.
Al-Jazeera television broadcast a video of a man kneeling and dressed in an orange jumpsuit surrounded by three gunmen.
The masked men, calling themselves the "Khaled Ibn al-Walid Brigade" linked to the "Islamic Army in Iraq," warned that the prisoner would be executed unless the Philippines withdraws its troops from Iraq within 72 hours.
Insurgents in Iraq have beheaded two hostages in the past two months: South Korean translator Kim Sun-Il and American contractor Nicholas Berg.
"These are humanitarian personnel and they are engaged in reconstruction," Arroyo spokesman Ignacio Bunye stressed, referring to the Filipino security forces there.
"They are not part of an occupation army."
Arroyo, a key Asian supporter of the US-led war on international terrorism, has previously rejected opposition calls to repatriate the contingent following the killing of three Filipino workers in Iraq prior to the handover.
Aside from the soldiers and police, more than 3,000 Filipino civilians are in Iraq, many of them employed by contractors and working inside US bases there.
Bunye said Manila repatriated more than 200 of them following the killings, but the rest elected to stay.
Meanwhile, Cimatu said it was possible the hostage was not even a Filipino.
"All our overseas Filipino workers are accounted for in their work sites" in Iraq, he said over ABS-CBN television.
However, he was not discounting the possibility that the hostage could have driven or flown to Iraq from neighboring Middle East countries, where close to one million Filipinos are working.
He appealed to Filipinos employed by companies in Jordan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, which have contracts in Iraq "not to drive cargo vehicles going to Iraq at this time."(AFP) |
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