First positive signs for kidnapped NZ cameraman

Palestinian Interior Minister Saeed Seyam says "things are going in a positive direction" as a wide range of people seek the release of New Zealand cameraman Olaf Wiig and American television reporter Steve Centanni.

But the minister, part of the Hamas-controlled cabinet in the Palestinian government last night offered no details.

"Efforts and contacts are being made to guarantee the safety and bring about the release of the two guests of Palestine," Siyam told reporters outside a Gaza City mosque.

He said the contacts were made with major Palestinian militant groups, all of whom denied kidnapping the journalists or knowing where they were being held.

"There are first promising signs," Siyam said, but did not elaborate

The statement was the first on efforts by the government to free Centanni and Wiig, kidnapped on August 14 while they were parked were parked near the headquarters of the Palestinian security services.

But the men's employer, Fox TV and American diplomats have said they hope the deadline set by the kidnappers for tonight (NZ time) will be extended, according to Time magazine, which reported the kidnap had more to do with internal Palestinian and Islamic militant politics than with striking a blow against the US.

The journalists were snatched by gunmen 10 days before a previously unknown group calling itself the Holy Jihad Brigades claimed responsibility for the abduction and called for the release of all Muslim prisoners in the United States by 9pm today (NZ time).

But Time dismissed the demand as a stalling tactic and quoted un-named Palestinian security sources as saying the Holy Jihad Brigades was formed specially to stage a high-publicity kidnapping of foreigners, in the hope of attracting cash from the Lebanese militia group, Hizbollah, which recently started to bankroll a wide array of Palestinian groups in Gaza and the West Bank.

It said the people in the Holy Jihad Brigades were a splinter group of gunmen from the late Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.

"Arafat's weak and distracted successor, (Palestinian President) Mahmoud Abbas, has failed to rein them in, and they now operate inside the West Bank territories and Gaza as lawless vigilantes," it said.

Some were still on the payroll of Gaza's Preventive Security Police, a fiefdom of the Fatah's bosses.

"Suspicion has fallen on three groups in particular: Al Nasser Salaheddin, Abu Reesh Brigade, Abu Rees Brigade, and a spin-off of al Qasa Brigades based in the Gaza town of Khan Younis, near where the TV crew was captured at gunpoint," the magazine reported.

The kidnapping was intended to discredit both president Abbas -- who told US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that he could free the pair of journalists -- and Palestinian prime minister Ismael Haniyeh, whose Hamas-led government has tried to crack down on Fatah splinter groups' roaming death squads and extortion rackets in Gaza.

Since then, president Abbas has left Gaza for Jordan.

Separately, the Jerusalem Post yesterday reported it had been told by a top Hamas activist that his movement's investigations had shown the two journalists were initially kidnapped by members of one of the Palestinian Authority's own security forces.

"The kidnappers, who wanted to put pressure on the Palestinian leadership to pay them their salaries, later handed the two over to Fatah gunmen," he told the newspaper.

"They are now being held in one of the refugee camps near Gaza City."

Fatah leaders in the Gaza Strip have denied responsibility, but some Hamas activists in Gaza City said they were convinced that one of Fatah's armed groups was holding the two.

"Some of these groups operate independently and are not in touch with their political leaders," ' a senior Hamas activist told the newspaper.

"The two foreign journalists are in their hands."

A New Zealand academic who has studied both Fatah and the Palestinian Authority, Massey University politics lecturer Nigel Parsons, told NZPA that if the men were being held by members of a Fatah militia, it might be good news in terms of the men's safety.

"It's very good news for them if the motivation is material and the abductors are simply disaffected unpaid policemen or militiamen with a local political motive," he said.

If the two journalists were being held by a faction focused on embarrassing the Palestinian Authority or extracting cash, they were less likely to be harmed, said Dr Parsons, who was in the West Bank in June researching the Palestinian Authority's security apparatus.

The Palmerston North academic also studied Fatah, the formerly-dominant political faction.

"Disaffected security apparatus or militia members abducting to embarrass the Government or to extract resources from them is the most plausible -- in that it gives a nice material motivation and is consistent with the previous pattern," Dr Parsons said today.

In those cases, the kidnap victims had come out safely.

The two were kidnapped as they were waiting outside one of the offices of the Palestinian Authority security forces in Gaza City.

Since then Palestinian Authority security sources said t here had been several cases where Fatah-affiliated gunmen and disgruntled security officers kidnapped foreigners.

- NZPA