Pakistani diplomat kidnapped in Iraq

Militants in Iraq have kidnapped a Pakistani diplomat, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry said today.

Malik Mohammed Javed, a deputy counsellor at the embassy who has lived in Iraq for six years, went missing in Baghdad yesterday after leaving home to pray at a mosque, officials said.

“Persons claiming to be members of the Omar bin Khattab group have apparently kidnapped the official,” the ministry said in a statement. It added that Javed had contacted the Pakistani Embassy in Baghdad and told diplomats there that he had not been harmed.

The government has asked the Iraqi ambassador in Islamabad to help secure Javed’s release, the statement said.

“Our charge d’affaires in Baghdad is also in constant touch with Iraqi authorities and local notables,” it said.

Javed is the fourth Pakistani to be kidnapped in Iraq. The first was abducted last June, but was released. A month later, two men working for a Kuwait-based company were kidnapped and later beheaded. The militants had demanded Pakistan, a US ally in its war on terrorism, not send troops to Iraq. Pakistan has declined Washington requests to deploy troops to the war-town country.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has appointed a former Pakistani diplomat, Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, as his special representative in Iraq.