Howard says no verification of Wood phone call

BRISBANE - Prime Minister John Howard says he has no independent verification of reports that a Muslim cleric has spoken to Australian hostage Douglas Wood in Iraq.

A Sydney spokesman for Australia's Islamic spiritual leader Sheikh Taj Aldin Alhilali has said the sheikh had spoken by telephone to an English speaking man he believed was Mr Wood.

Mr Howard said yesterday he had no other information than what was being carried in news reports.

"We have no independent verification of that," Mr Howard told ABC radio in Brisbane.

"I can't say whether that phone call did come from Mr Wood. My only source of that story is indirectly from the sheikh's spokesman in Sydney.

"I hope that it's true and everybody is working to one objective and that is to try and get this poor man released."

The 63-year-old Australian engineer has been in captivity for almost three weeks, held by a rebel group calling itself the Shura Council of the Mujahedeen of Iraq.

- AAP