Iraq Says It Isn’t Holding CBS News Crew

A CNN correspondent in Baghdad quoted Iraqi officials as saying they aren’t holding a CBS crew that’s been missing for a week and don’t have any information about the four-member news team.

CBS, meanwhile, says it has expanded efforts to find the crew by urgently and aggressively contacting officials in the United States and other countries, including Iraq.

CBS, quoting only a high-ranking Saudi official, today reported that an Iraqi deserter told interrogators he saw four foreigners taken into custody by Iraqi troops. The official said he believes the four could be the TV crew.

Correspondent Bob Simon, producer Peter Bluff, cameraman Roberto Alvarez and soundman Juan Caldera disappeared Jan. 21.

They were traveling without military escort near occupied Kuwait.

“We are doing all we can to to determine if indeed Bob Simon and his crew are in Iraqi hands, and if he is, that he be brought to Baghdad and shipped home,” CNN’s Peter Arnett reported by telephone from Baghdad.

“The Iraqis are saying they do not have him, or they don’t have any information about him at this point,” Arnett said.

Arnett reported that the director of Iraq’s Information Ministry told him that “they have nothing in their intelligence sources, and military and government sources, about the presence of the CBS team in Kuwait.”