8A THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
NEWS
IRAQ
THURSDAY. DECEMBER 8, 2005
Hostages plead for release
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
This still image made from video and released Wednesday by IntelCenter, a government contractor that does support work for the U.S. intelligence community, shows the chained hands of hostages Briton Norman Kember, left, and American Tom Fox. The Swords of Righteousness Brigade released a new video Wednesday showing Kember and Fox, their hands chained and their eyes taped shut. A senior Iraqi official said Wednesday that "intelligence and security efforts" were under way to win the release of Western hostages, while kidnappers reportedly extended a deadline for the threatened killing of the four captive peace activists.
BY CHRIS TOMLINSON THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BAGHDAD, Iraq — Kidnappers extended a deadline until Saturday in their threat to kill four captive peace activists and posted a video of two of the hostages wearing robes and shackled with chains.
The original deadline set by the group calling itself the Swords of Righteousness was Thursday. The extension was announced in a statement that accompanied Wednesday's video, according to Al-Jazeera and IntelCenter, a government contractor that does support work for the U.S. intelligence community.
Norman Kember, 74, of London, Tom Fox, 54, of Clear Brook, Va., and the Canadians James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32, were taken hostage in Baghdad two weeks ago.
They were working for the Christian Peacemaker Teams, an anti-war group, and were among seven Westerners who have been abducted in Iraq since Nov. 26. The other hostages were an American, a German and a Frenchman.
The other American in captivity was shown Tuesday on a separate insurgent video broadcast on Al-jazeera. On Wednesday, his brother in the United States identified the captive as Ronald Schulz, 40, an industrial electrician from Alaska.
"I don't want to get my brother killed." Ed Schulz said. "But the fact that he has blond hair and blue eyes might get him killed."
The brief videotape of the Christian peace activists transmitted Wednesday by Al-Jazeera did not show faces of the two robed and shackled figures. Still photos provided by IntelCenter, however, showed the two were Fox and Kember. The two other
hostages were not shown
Fox and Kember were blindfolded, and the stills appeared to have been made from a more complete version of the video that Al-Jazeera aired. Unlike the civilian clothing they were wearing in two earlier videos, this time the hostages were wearing orange jumpsuits.
In the tape, the two captives made statements condemning the U.S. and British presence in Iraq. Both men were instructed to give their statements twice, which they did without reading a text because they were blindfolded, according to IntelCenter. As a result, each man's second statement was slightly different from his first.
"I'd like to offer my plea to the people of America, not the government of America, a plea
for my release from captivity and also a plea for a release from captivity of all the people of Iraq who are also suffering the same fate," Fox said in the transcript. "And that is the occupation of the American troops and the British troops which has brought me to this condition and has brought the Iraqi people to the condition they're in."
In his statement, Kember appealed to British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
"I ask Mr. Blair, the British government and the British people to work both for my release and for the release of the Iraqi people from oppression."
A senior Iraqi official said Wednesday that "intelligence and security efforts" were under way to win the release of the Western hostages,
Maj. Gen. Hussein Ali Kamal, deputy interior minister for intelligence, said efforts were "aiming and hoping for the release of those people who came to Iraq to provide humanitarian services."
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said his government would not meet the kidnappers demands.
Religious and political leaders abroad — including the Rev. Jesse Jackson and former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder — called for the hostages' release.
"It's a desperate situation for Mr. Kember and the fellow hostages and their families. We've had no contact (with the kidnappers) but we are obviously aware of their so-called demands."
WORLD
Adrian Wvld/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Canada's Prime Minister Paul Martin gestures as he speaks during a news conference at the United Nations Climate Change conference in Montreal on Wednesday.
U.S. pressured on carbon emissions
BY CHARLES J. HANLEY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Arctic natives, meanwhile, announced they had filed an international human-rights complaint against the United States, to try to pressure Washington to cap the "greenhouse gases" they blame for the melting of the glaciers in their ice homelands.
"It is our belief that progress cannot be made through these formalized discussions," U.S. delegation head Paula Dobriansky told reporters as a two-week U.N. climate conference came to an end, involving more than 180 nations.
Bangladesh Ambassador Rafiq Ahmed Khan, whose lowlying land faces future flooding from seas rising with global warming, spoke on behalf of the poorest nations.
MONTREAL — The United States on Wednesday rejected a Canadian bid to draw Washington into future global talks on climate change, a new round that would extend mandatory cutbacks in carbon emissions.
"Only strong political will
can show the way," he told delegates. "These impacts are felt mostly by the people who are poor and most vulnerable."
It was the first U.N. climate conference since the Kyoto Protocol took effect last February, requiring 35 industrialized countries to curb emissions of carbon dioxide other gases.
Among major developed nations, only the United States and Australia rejected that agreement, Japan, and designed to produce an average 5 percent reduction of emissions below 1990 levels by 2012.
Under the protocol, talks must now begin on emissions controls after 2012, and Canadian Environment Minister Stephane Dion, looking for a compromise route forward, this week proposed a plan for "discussions to explore and analyze approaches for long-term cooperative action to address climate change," with a deadline for agreement by 2008.
"Surely we realize by now that a greater cost will be exacted if we lack the will or tenacity to change," he said to loud applause.
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