Australia vowed yesterday never to negotiate with terrorists amid claims Iraqi militants have kidnap-ped two Australians and will execute them unless Canberra withdraws its troops from the country.
Australian hostage negotiators were placed on standby as officials in Canberra and Baghdad scrambled to verify the claim by a group calling itself the Horror Brigades of the Islamic Secret Army.
Officials initially said 88 Australian civilians were registered with Canberra's embassy in Baghdad, that all were believed to be safe and there was a possibility the claim was a hoax.
But after a day of frantic checking, the government lifted its estimate of Australians in Iraq to 154 and said 64 were still unaccounted for.
"I would encourage people in Australia who have employees or loved ones or friends working in Iraq to get in touch with them," Prime Minister John Howard told reporters.
With the Iraqi group threatening to execute its hostages within 24 hours unless Howard personally announced the withdrawal of Australia's troops, officials in Canberra asked their Iraqi, US, British, Japanese and South Korean counterparts to help determine whether the kidnap claims were true.
The group is the same organization believed to have been behind the gruesome executions of 12 Nepalese workers in Iraq last month.
Many of the Australians in Iraq are believed to be ex-military, including special forces, performing security work.
A Perth-based company, Australian Professional Bodyguards, said four of its six-man team in Iraq were unaccounted for.
They had been operating in the region where the Australians were allegedly captured, but company director Frank Halliwell said, based on information from Australian intelligence services, he was not concerned for their safety.
Howard said his government activated a contingency plan after it heard reports that two Australian and two East Asian security workers had been seized on a road between Baghdad and the northern city of Mosul.
Government officials confirmed the plan involved placing hostage negotiators on standby. But Howard said the "operational" measure did not change the government's long-standing position that it will not give in to blackmail.
"We will not alter our foreign policy, our defense policy, our security policy in response to any threat of terrorist organizations," he said.
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US
SHIFT: Taiwan’s better-than-expected first-quarter GDP and signs of weakness in the US have driven global capital back to emerging markets, the central bank head said The central bank yesterday blamed market speculation for the steep rise in the local currency, and urged exporters and financial institutions to stay calm and stop panic sell-offs to avoid hurting their own profitability. The nation’s top monetary policymaker said that it would step in, if necessary, to maintain order and stability in the foreign exchange market. The remarks came as the NT dollar yesterday closed up NT$0.919 to NT$30.145 against the US dollar in Taipei trading, after rising as high as NT$29.59 in intraday trading. The local currency has surged 5.85 percent against the greenback over the past two sessions, central