Family plea to captors - Get in touch now [audio report]

Anita McNaught says her kidnapped husband, Olaf Wiig, will be aware every effort is being made to secure his release but says it is impossible to predict how long it will take.

Ms McNaught arrived in Gaza yesterday to join efforts to free her 36-year-old husband and Steve Centanni, the Fox News reporter with whom he was kidnapped in Gaza City on Tuesday.

Masked gunmen, who have still not made their identity known, ambushed and abducted the pair from a Fox News vehicle.

Prime Minister Helen Clark said today she contacted Palestinian President Abbas overnight and he had given a "very, very strong message of co-operation".

She told National Radio: "President Abbas said to me, and I quote: 'These people are our guests and we will do everything we can to help'."

Ms McNaught did not sleep for 36 hours after learning of her husband's kidnap. She was in Syria and travelled overland through Jordan and Israel to Gaza.

She told the Herald last night that she had joined a Fox News team in Gaza working "unstintingly" to find the pair.

"They feel it's of enormous use that someone representing Olaf's family is here," she said.

"They feel that moral weight here in Gaza and I'm very happy to be a participant in the meetings that they've set up."

The group had met Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' chief of staff Rafik Husseini upon her arrival (Wednesday night local time) and she had been reassured by the meeting.

"They are very experienced in dealing with these kidnappings because there have been so many. The one thing they are baffled about, I think, is the one we are all baffled about, which is why we haven't heard from the kidnappers by now.

"What we are all waiting for is for the people who have taken Olaf and Steve to come out and say, 'These are our demands'. Until really we know what the objective was behind the kidnapping, we have no concrete idea about who it would be who has done the abduction."

Ms McNaught said conditions in Gaza were difficult and while she was speaking to the Herald her phone went dead.

When the call was reconnected a minute later, she said an Israeli bomb had just gone off.

Despite the worry and lack of sleep, Ms McNaught said she was coping well.

"I'm a person who deals with stress by doing stuff and I'm very happy I'm here, except that happy isn't the right word ... there's nowhere else I could possibly be."

She was confident her husband would know "we're doing everything we can to get him free" and believed he would befriend his captors.

"It will be calm and those guys will just be sitting tight."

Without knowing the captors, it was impossible to predict how long it would take to win their release, but she hoped it would be hours rather than days.

"The only thing that's predictable in Gaza is unpredictability," she said.

Ms McNaught said there was no good reason for the two men to be held.

"They are friends of the Palestinians. They are here telling the Palestinian story for weeks now, when the rest of the world's media has not been here."

New Zealand is making diplomatic efforts to free Mr Wiig, and the Ambassador to Turkey, Jan Henderson, arrived in Israel yesterday. Ms Henderson told One News she would stay in Jerusalem rather than go to Gaza, where security was an issue. "I'll only go in if it's going to advance the situation," she said.

Mr Wiig's father, Roger, made an emotional plea to the captors as the family endured a second day not knowing the fate of the former TV3 cameraman.

"What we need to say at this point is we'd plead with the captors to make themselves known and to release Olaf and Steve," he said.

"We're really wanting the captors to know that his family are anxious for him and that we're concerned about the family of the American journalist as well."

The Rev Wiig said the kidnappers should have no grudge against the pair: "Olaf and Steve are people who would understand them and would understand their cause and would be sympathetic to them."

The family had no plans to go to Gaza at this stage.

- Additional reporting NZPA