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Two Japanese hostages freed in Iraq, Falluja calm
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-04-18 10:59
Kidnappers freed two Japanese hostages in Baghdad Saturday, but the standoff in the southern city of Najaf showed no sign of easing and rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's spokesman declared negotiations were stalled.
Guns fell silent in Falluja, west of Baghdad, where air strikes and clashes have punctuated a shaky truce, but a U.S. spokesman said time was running out for talks aimed at ending fighting there between rebels and U.S. Marines.
In Najaf, the Shi'ite holy city where U.S. troops are massing and Sadr and hundreds of militiamen are holed up, Sadr's spokesman said: "If the Americans attack Najaf this will be zero hour and mass revolution...a Shi'ite-American confrontation."
U.S. officials say Sadr, who is wanted in connection with the murder of a moderate Shi'ite cleric a year ago, must not only face justice in an Iraqi court but also disband his forces.
The two Japanese, Jumpei Yasuda and Nobutaka Watanabe, were unshaven and looked tired but in good health as they were handed over to Japanese diplomats at Baghdad's Um al-Qura mosque.
Insurgents have seized more than 40 foreigners this month. Most have been released, though an Italian has been executed and his captors have threatened to kill three more taken with him unless Italian troops pull out of Iraq.
Italy has refused and Arab television station al Jazeera broadcast an appeal from the families of the three others, begging for their lives to be spared.
"We are simple people like yourselves. We appeal to your religious consciences as believers," said Antonella Agliana, whose brother Maurizio is one of the three.
President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair vowed in Washington Friday to stamp out violence in Iraq, where U.S.-led forces are battling guerrillas in Sunni central Iraq and trying to snuff out the revolt by Sadr's Shi'ite militia in the south.
In mostly Sunni Falluja, a leading American official, Richard Jones, joined week-old peace talks with city leaders, senior U.S. spokesman Dan Senor told a news conference.
"We are hopeful about their intentions," he said of the local leaders. "Our overriding question is can they deliver and, if so, can they do so expeditiously? Time is running out."
FALLUJA CALM
One resident in the city of 300,000 told a reporter: "For the first time in days, Falluja is completely calm."
U.S. Marines launched a crackdown in the city on April 5 after the gruesome killings of four American private security guards, ambushed in the town the previous week.
U.S. officials want their killers brought to justice and the disarming of an estimated 1,000 to 2,000 fighters in Falluja, where they say foreign Islamist militants are also operating.
The captors of U.S. Private Keith Maupin, seized after an attack on a road convoy west of Baghdad last week, released a videotape Friday that showed him surrounded by masked gunmen.
Maupin, one of two missing U.S. soldiers, identified himself in a soft voice on the videotape.
The two freed Japanese said they had been well treated during their three days of captivity. "We had a good meal every day," Yasuda said. "We were caught around Abu Ghraib and after that we were blindfolded and changed house every day."
Three other Japanese were freed Thursday, but several foreigners are still missing, including a U.S. contractor, a Palestinian, a Dane, a Jordanian and the three Italians.
The climate of insecurity prompted the U.S. military to close indefinitely highways One and Eight, north and south of Baghdad. It said guerrilla attacks had made them unsafe for civilian use, and they needed repairing.
Witnesses said insurgents had blown up at least two bridges over Highway Eight, running from Baghdad to Hilla and Basra in the south, closing the highway and further disrupting the battered transport system.
In Diwaniya, a Shi'ite town east of Najaf where Spanish troops have clashed with Sadr's militiamen, heavy gunfire erupted Saturday evening and witnesses said two military vehicles were ablaze.
DEFIANT SADR
Sadr is leading the insurgency in the south and 2,500 U.S. soldiers are poised outside Najaf, vowing to kill or capture him and dismantle his militia, the Mehdi Army.
About 200 supporters, including some wounded militiamen, filed into his office Saturday to seek his blessing.
Sadr's spokesman Qays al-Khazali told a news conference "The negotiations are stalled...I don't have any hope. I don't see a real desire from the other side."
Senor said there was no direct negotiating track with Sadr but there had been contacts with various intermediaries.
The leader of U.S. troops outside Najaf said their presence had helped. "Sadr has gotten nervous," Colonel Dana Pittard of the 3rd Brigade Task Force told reporters. "Sadr's militia moved into the city instead of operating freely in the area."
Shi'ite clerics have worked hard to avert a bloody showdown in Najaf and its shrines, but a spokesman for one of the city's four grand ayatollahs said the Shi'ite religious establishment was not directly involved in talks.
April has been Iraq's bloodiest month since Saddam Hussein was ousted a year ago. The U.S. military has lost at least 93 soldiers in combat since March 31 -- more than the total killed in the three-week war that toppled Saddam.
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