French leaders in crisis meeting over hostages

The French government headed into crisis talks today in a bid to save the lives of two journalists held hostage by Islamic militants in Iraq – but refusing to bow to the kidnappers’ demands to rescind a ban on Muslim head scarves in French schools.

The two French journalists appealed late last night for their countrymen and president to comply with their captors’ demands in a video broadcast by Al-Jazeera television.

The tape was shown hours after France insisted it would go ahead with the ban when schools open on Thursday.

“I appeal to the French people to go to the streets ... because our lives are threatened,” journalist Georges Malbrunot said in English on the video.

Speaking in French, fellow hostage Christian Chesnot called on French President Jacques Chirac and his government to drop the ban, according to an Al-Jazeera newsreader, who interpreted his remarks into Arabic.

The two unshaven men, missing since August 19, sat together in front of a grey, mud wall with a small window above them.

Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin called an emergency meeting of his top ministers for this morning, as Foreign Minister Michel Barnier began the second day of emergency diplomacy in the Middle East to free the journalists.

“Every tool of the State is mobilised today,” Culture and Communications Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres told LCI television before the meeting started. “The government, like the French people, is mobilised, united and concerned.”

In a video broadcast on Saturday, a militant group calling itself The Islamic Army in Iraq gave the French government 48 hours to overturn the ban, but mentioned no threat against the men’s lives.

A militant group with a similar name was believed to have killed an Italian freelance journalist last week after Italy’s government rejected a demand that it withdraw its 3,000 soldiers in Iraq.

Al-Jazeera said the group holding the two Frenchmen had extended its deadline by 24 hours, to late today.

France’s government was unequivocal about keeping the ban. ”The law will be applied,” spokesman Jean-Francois Cope said.

While the law bans all “conspicuous” religious apparel, such as Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses, it is aimed at Muslim head scarves in public schools.

Many French fear their secular nation, which has the biggest Islamic population in western Europe with five million Muslims, is under threat from a rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism.

The kidnappers called the ban “an aggression on the Islamic religion and personal freedoms.” But Muslim leaders at home and abroad rallied around France with statements of support and calls for the two reporters to be let go.

The men’s plight has been a shock to many in France, which opposed the US-led invasion of Iraq and has pursued generally pro-Arab policies.

“The French have discovered that having opposed the Iraq war does not make them immune from the wrath of Islamists,” said Bruno Tertrais at the Foundation for Strategic Research.