Overhang

Hunting the Iraqi way

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Technopromexport was the only Russian company that had already decided to evacuate. A representative of LUKOIL-Overseas told the Vremya Novostey newspaper that the company’s Baghdad branch is now only “studying the possibility of evacuation,” but he refused to say how many of the company’s employees are currently in Iraq. And Power Machines claims that employees will be evacuated on an Emergencies Ministry plane only if tension in the country does not subside. Soyuzneftegaz told the Vremya Novostei newspaper that all of their employees managed to return from Baghdad on Monday - they were on a short business trip, since the company has not yet opened a representative office in Iraq, both for security reasons and because that she just doesn’t need it yet.

Hostages in Iraq are taken and released in batches, which only exacerbates the feeling of chaos and terror. On Sunday, kidnappers freed eight citizens from Pakistan, Turkey, India, Nepal and the Philippines - countries outside the US-led occupation coalition. But in recent days, more than 40 people from 13 countries have been kidnapped in Iraq. Among them are seven employees of a branch of the American company Halliburton, which supplies petroleum products to Iraq, three US military personnel, four Italian private security guards, two Czech television journalists, a Canadian and an Israeli Arab. The militants did not even heed the calls of Emperor Akihito to release three completely non-military Japanese captured last Thursday. They compared the actions of the coalition forces in Iraq with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - in general, until the Japanese soldiers leave Iraq, the hostages will not see freedom.

So the five Ukrainian hostages were very lucky - if the Russians had not been with them, they would have been sitting in a cramped and stuffy basement until the Ukrainian military was withdrawn from Iraq. After yesterday's death in this country of the fifth Ukrainian serviceman and the hostage incident, the parliamentary opposition in Kyiv intends to demand that President Leonid Kuchma withdraw the 1,600-strong Ukrainian contingent.

Beijing's membership in the camp of peace-loving forces ensured the release of seven Chinese on the very day of their abduction. However, two Chinese were injured from beatings - probably the kidnappers became very annoyed when they realized that it was not the Japanese who were caught in their net. However, in the current tense situation, even Germany and France, known for their opposition to the American war against the Baghdad regime, considered it best to begin the evacuation of their civilian contract specialists from Iraq.

Being taken hostage by extremists is far from the worst outcome for a foreigner in Iraq. Over the past month alone, 20 civilian specialists from the USA, Great Britain, Canada, Finland, Bulgaria and South Africa have died there. There is information that 40 British engineers refused to fly to Baghdad until better times. If the unrest continues unabated in the coming weeks, the hostage crisis and spate of killings could cause most Western and Japanese companies to flee Iraq.

Alexander SAMOKHOTKIN, Nikolay GORELOV