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.
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