Abductions Spark Debate Over the Right Response

BAGHDAD —  An epidemic of kidnappings in Iraq has intensified an international debate over whether to negotiate with abductors or stand firm and risk more beheadings.

It is a dilemma that more than 20 nations have faced over the last four months as insurgents have kidnapped nearly 70 foreign workers here.

A Jordanian transportation firm, Daoud & Partners, on Tuesday became the latest foreign company to announce plans to withdraw its workers from Iraq, a move it hopes will secure the release of two drivers kidnapped this week.

U.S. and Iraqi officials have stepped up their appeals, urging foreign governments and contractors to stand firm against the threats.

“Democracy is hard. Democracy is dangerous,” Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said during a visit to Hungary. “And this is the time for us to be steadfast, not get weak in the knees.”

Interim Iraqi President Ghazi Ajil Yawer said his government would not deal with hostage-takers. “We will never give in to their demands or negotiate with them,” he told reporters Tuesday. “Whoever the hostage, we won’t pay a single cent or make any concessions.”

The debate over hostage negotiations was revived this month when the Philippines agreed to recall 51 soldiers from Iraq in exchange for the release of Angelo de la Cruz, a Philippine truck driver.

The concession drew scorn from parts of the international community, but Iraqi clerics and tribal leaders say negotiations can be fruitful -- and they have played key roles in recent weeks.

After presiding at a reception last week for Iraqis working against prisoner abuse, Sheik Hisham Dulaimi said he was surprised to discover a plain, brown envelope on a table beneath a poster of a hooded detainee.

“We authorize you to negotiate with the embassies of the seven hostages we have,” read a typewritten note from a group calling itself the “Holders of the Black Banners,” which has threatened to kill seven employees of a Kuwaiti trucking company.

Dulaimi, a Sunni Muslim tribal leader who worked as a mediator to free Japanese and Russian hostages, went on television, pleading with the kidnappers for more time to negotiate. But Tuesday, he turned his criticism to the Kuwaiti company and foreign embassies for failing to negotiate more aggressively.

“The ball is in their court,” Dulaimi said.

A manager with the company, the Kuwait & Gulf Link Transport Co., said Tuesday that it had been desperately trying to negotiate the release of its workers through other channels and only recently learned that Dulaimi might be able to help. “We welcome all avenues,” said Rana H. Abu-Zaineh.

The kidnappers called on the company to compensate families of victims of U.S. attacks in Fallouja and demanded the release of Iraqi prisoners in American and Kuwaiti jails. But the sheik said he believed that the kidnappers were open to other offers. He said he didn’t know the identity of the kidnappers but believed they were Iraqis, not foreign fighters.

“We have to negotiate now, otherwise they will be slaughtered,” Dulaimi said. He insisted that ransom was not a factor.

Others paint a more cynical picture of the hostage-taking: It is money, not ideology, that motivates the kidnappers, they say.

“This has become a way of life here, under cover of [politics] and TV coverage,” Interior Ministry spokesman Sabah Kadhim said. “Usually through negotiation the ransom is paid. Sometimes they use clerics to try to lower the price. That’s how it goes.”

The sum usually is kept secret, Kadhim said, and can vary depending on who is paying. Some of the payoffs reportedly have amounted to millions of dollars, Kadhim said.

“We don’t, as a ministry, negotiate. Not in public, and not in private,” the spokesman said. “But you can’t stop people from trying to save their family members.”

It was negotiation, not money, that led kidnappers to drive Egyptian diplomat Mohammed Mamdouh Helmi Qutb blindfolded to an undisclosed spot in Baghdad and set him free, the diplomat said Tuesday. Qutb was kidnapped Friday as he left a Baghdad mosque.

Sitting at his desk at the Egyptian Embassy, in front of a portrait of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Qutb insisted that not a penny had been paid for his release. His kidnappers were Iraqis with an Islamist bent, he said. They treated him gently and, toward the end of his captivity, brought him a television tuned to Al Hurra, the U.S. government’s Arabic-language satellite channel.

During his captivity, tribal chieftains and a Sunni council of Muslim scholars tried to talk the kidnappers into releasing him, he said. Biographical coverage of Qutb on the Arab satellite channel Al Jazeera also played a role, he said. Qutb teaches the Koran to young boys at his neighborhood mosque in Baghdad, and his kidnappers were moved when Al Jazeera broadcast interviews with his pupils, he said.

If the kidnappers were hoping for political gains, they fell short of their demand that Egypt not participate in the U.S.-led reconstruction of Iraq.

Qutb repeated his government’s commitment to help Iraq develop its security forces: “Our aim is to ease the suffering of the Iraqi people and participate in reconstruction.”