U.S. Hostage Urges Haste in Talks

Jill Carroll, the American reporter kidnapped in Iraq last month, appeared on a new videotape aired by an Arabic-language television channel Thursday night, urging her supporters to do whatever is necessary to obtain her release.

Looking more healthy and composed than in her previous appearance, on Jan. 30, the 28-year-old freelancer asked an unnamed third party to quickly comply with the kidnappers’ demands.

“I am here,” said Carroll, a Michigan native who first arrived in Iraq shortly after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and stayed through the insurgency, reporting for the Christian Science Monitor. She was captured by an unknown armed group in Baghdad on Jan. 7.

“I am fine,” she said. “Please just do whatever they want, give them whatever they want as quickly as possible.” She punctuated her 22-second message, which she said was recorded Feb. 2, with a note of urgency: “There is a very short time. Please do it fast. That’s all.”

The tape, with its references to ongoing negotiations, suggests that Carroll has not fallen into the hands of the most brutal category of kidnappers in Iraq, the extremist Islamists such as Jordanian militant Abu Musab Zarqawi who have beheaded Western hostages for political ends.

Still, it remains unclear what additional demands the kidnappers may be making. In the tape that aired last month, Carroll called for the release of all female prisoners being held in Iraq.

Army Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch told reporters Thursday that American and Iraqi officials planned to release about 450 prisoners sometime next week. He said he did not know whether any were women.

American military officials say insurgents have turned to kidnapping for ransom as a way to fund their operations. The number of kidnappings reported to Iraqi crime hotlines has risen slightly in the last few weeks, they said.

“We are concerned about the number of kidnappings we’re seeing,” Lynch said. “A lot of them are conducted by criminal gangs.”

Thursday’s video was broadcast by privately owned Al Rai, a Kuwaiti satellite channel known more for entertainment than news. It showed Carroll wearing a greenish head scarf, in front of a pink backdrop with a flower-like design.

In the video, Carroll made reference to an apparent earlier communication between her abductors and negotiators, saying the latest video was made to confirm a letter she had sent in her own handwriting to “prove I am with the mujahedin,” a reference to the Sunni Arab-led insurgency.

“I sent you a letter written by my hand, but you wanted more evidence,” she said in the tape.

In a statement released after the video aired, Christian Science Monitor Editor Richard Bergenheim said the paper was “seeking more information about the letter that Jill refers to in the video.”

Western news agencies quoted officials from Al Rai as saying the tape was delivered to the television station Thursday along with a letter that was handed to Kuwaiti authorities.