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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JDN who wrote (685449)	6/13/2005 7:24:39 AM
From: Kenneth E. Phillipps	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Just get your information from Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and save all those trees. LOL!

To: JDN who wrote (685449)	6/13/2005 3:30:07 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 769667

France refuses to explain hostage release Monterey Herald ^ \| 6/13/05 \| Jamey Keatan - AP PARIS - France, which denied it paid a ransom to win the release of French journalist held in Iraq, refused Monday to give any details that led to winning freedom for the reporter and her Iraqi guide after five months of captivity. Florence Aubenas and Hussein Hanoun al-Saadi, who were freed Sunday, had been missing since Jan. 5, when they were seen leaving Aubenas' hotel in Baghdad. French officials have never identified the kidnappers, although authorities in both France and Iraq suggested they were probably seeking money rather than pressing a political agenda. Despite mounting calls for the government to explain how the releases were achieved, Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy refused to identify the captors, because he said they are still holding other people. "I can say absolutely nothing about that," Douste-Blazy said on RTL radio. "There are still some hostages in the place of detention where Florence and Hussein were a few hours ago." Government spokesman Jean-Francois Cope said France paid no ransom. "There was absolutely no request for money," Cope said on Europe-1 radio. "No ransom was paid." Former Foreign Minister Michel Barnier, who worked the case until leaving the government this month, also said there was no ransom. But questions persisted. "Now the time of joy is over, the time for explanations has come," said Annick Lepetit, a spokeswoman for the main opposition Socialist Party. "The public authorities, the president, the government must explain themselves." Upon returning to France, Aubenas said she had been bound and blindfolded while captive. She thanked all those who supported her. The guide was reunited with his family in Baghdad. Liberation director Serge July, in an editorial Monday, called the captors "professionals in kidnapping, who hold an important - if not central - role in the atrocious market for hostages" in Iraq. He did not elaborate. July, a Liberation co-founder who shuttled to and from the Middle East during the hostage crisis, joined many others in praising Aubenas' tenacity. Aubenas, 44, is "an incredible fighter, with a considerable psychological resistance, who in many ways simply didn't crack," he said on France-Inter radio. Al-Saadi, in an interview published Monday in daily Le Monde, described the hostage-takers as Sunni Muslims from Iraq's Salafist movement, and said they did not mistreat him, but said he lost nearly eight pounds because he had no appetite. "When you're too sad, you don't eat," he said, saying his separation from his wife and four children "was too hard for me." A former Iraqi fighter pilot who learned the French language and how to fly French-made Mirage jets in France in the mid-1980s, al-Saadi said his captors didn't seem to care that he was a Shiite, as long as he opposed "the American occupation of Iraq." Terms of the release were not clear, although Liberation suggested that some sort of trade may have taken place. One article had the headline: "Why we will never know if a ransom was paid."