Posted on 04/10/2004 11:12:57 AM PDT by MegaSilver
A senior Japanese official headed emergency meetings in Amman, Jordan, yesterday to co-ordinate efforts to rescue three nationals kidnapped in Iraq. Their abductors have threatened to burn the three alive if Japan does not pull its troops out by a deadline today.
Senior Vice-Foreign Minister Ichiro Aisawa said no effort would be spared by Tokyo to free the hostages, who were snatched by a previously unknown Iraqi group.
Diplomats said Mr Aisawa entered back-to-back meetings with a 10-strong emergency taskforce of senior Japanese diplomats and security officials. He would not say whether any contact had been made with the hostage-takers.
The three hostages are aid worker Nahoko Takato, 34, freelance reporter Soichiro Koriyama, 32, and Noriaki Imai, 18, who had planned to look into the effects of depleted uranium weapons. Their whereabouts are unclear.
Although a visit to Iraq to meet members of the US-led coalition or even negotiate with the hostage-takers was not ruled out, Japanese envoys said Mr Aisawa's rescue effort would be co-ordinated from Amman.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, facing his toughest political test, has vowed not to pull Japan's troops from Iraq despite appeals from the hostages' families, but some analysts say mishandling the crisis could bring down his Government. Mr Koizumi said on Friday that Japan could not give in to "despicable threats".
The turmoil continued yesterday as street fighting erupted in Baghdad. Youths with rifles and grenade launchers battled US troops in a Sunni Muslim area, witnesses said. Dozens of gunmen, faces masked by Arab headdresses, attacked a police station and shot at US troops in the Adhimiya district.
As violence struck the capital, US forces offered rebels in the city of Fallujah a ceasefire to allow for peace talks after almost a week of fierce fighting.
Six more US soldiers were killed on Friday, according to the latest official casualty toll. The toll put the number of US soldiers killed in action since the start of the war at 455.
US forces have been battling Sunni insurgents in Fallujah and the nearby town of Ramadi, west of Baghdad, for the past week.
There were also clashes with Shiite militiamen south of Baghdad in a week of bloody turmoil that killed several hundred Iraqis and at least 51 US and coalition troops. Iraqi politicians yesterday urged US forces and Sunni and Shiite rebels to stop fighting.
The director of Fallujah's main hospital said on Friday that about 450 people had been killed and 1000 injured since the US began "Operation Vigilant Resolve" five days earlier.
The Iraqi Red Crescent reported yesterday that its director and his wife were murdered. Hawar al-Ghafouri, Red Crescent operations director in the north, said the burned bodies of Barazan Mohammed Ahmed and his wife had been found dumped in a street in the city of Mosul. They had been missing since Wednesday.
Amid the unrest, up to a million Muslim pilgrims massed in Karbala yesterday as radical Shiite fighters and Polish troops exchanged rocket and mortar fire on the outskirts.
Militiamen loyal to anti-US cleric Sheikh Muqtada al-Sadr were controlling access to Karbala, 110 kilometres south of Baghdad, and militia leaders told occupying forces to stay back until ceremonies marking the religious occasion of Arbaeen end today.
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