Hopes up for hostage release

FRANCE remains hopeful that two French hostages in Iraq would be freed after a religious fatwa issued in Iraq demanded their release.

The announcement of the edict by a hardline Sunni Muslim cleric, Sheikh Mehdi al-Sumaidaie, offered encouragement after foreign minister Michel Barnier returned from a Middle East mission empty- handed to brief President Jacques Chirac.

“We have serious reasons to believe both of them are in good health and that a favourable outcome is possible,” Barnier told reporters