Hostage video prompts new release call from Clark

Harmeet Sooden

DUBAI (Reuters) - Prime Minister Helen Clark has repeated calls for Western hostages, including Auckland-based student Harmeet Sooden, to be released after a video showed them apparently still alive.

The captors of four Western peace activists in Iraq said they were giving US-led forces a last chance to free Iraqi prisoners or they would kill the hostages, Al Jazeera television said.

The Arabic channel aired a video from the Swords of Truth group, apparently showing the two Canadians, one Briton and one American standing against a wall. The grainy footage was dated January 21.

Mr Sooden is a Canadian citizen.

Prime Minister Helen Clark said: "Harmeet's family and the families of the three other hostages with him have had a long and worrying delay since they last heard news of their loved ones.

"The New Zealand Government continues to urge the captors of Harmeet and his friends to release them. All four were on a peaceful mission to Iraq, and were motivated purely by a desire to help the Iraqi people."

Norman Kember, American Tom Fox and Canadians James Loney and Mr Sooden were kidnapped on November 26 in Baghdad, where they were working with a Christian peace organisation, by the previously unknown Swords of Truth.

The wife of the 74-year-old British hostage appealed for the release of her ailing husband in a televised message on Monday.

The Swords of Truth earlier issued a video of the four men and accused them of spying for US-led forces. It threatened to kill them unless prisoners in Iraqi jails were freed.

Muslim scholars and activists from around the world, including leaders of the militant Hamas and Hizbollah groups, have appealed for the release of the aid workers.

Thousands of civilians have been kidnapped since the fall of Saddam Hussein, including more than 200 foreigners seized by gangs seeking ransom or insurgents trying to put pressure on their governments to withdraw from Iraq. Many have been freed, but about 50 have been killed.

- REUTERS, NZPA