A United States contract worker kidnapped in Baghdad on Monday appeared in a video on Wednesday night begging for his life and for US troops to leave Iraq.
Jeffrey Ake, the head of a company which makes equipment for bottling water, read a prepared statement from behind a desk while two masked gunmen stood over him, one pointing an assault rifle at his head.
Ake, from LaPorte, Indiana, held a passport to his chest and appeared nervous. There was no sound on the video broadcast by al-Jazeera, but the Qatar-based television network said he had urged the US administration to negotiate with insurgents.
The appeal came as Ukraine’s President, Viktor Yushchenko, signed a decree ordering the country’s troops to leave Iraq by the end of the year, further eroding the US-led coalition in the wake of the Polish pullout announced on Tuesday.
Ukraine’s 1 650-strong force, one of the biggest contingents after Britain, South Korea, Italy and Poland, has suffered 18 deaths. Yushchenko promised to bring the troops home in last year’s election.
The US president, George Bush, welcomed his ally’s promise to coordinate the withdrawal with coalition partners, but the US is known to be disappointed with the decision, which could hinder reductions in its own 150 000-strong force.
Jokes about the ”coalition of the wilting” have done the rounds since Spain pulled out last year. Italy has hinted it will follow.
There was further violence in Iraq on Wednesday. A decoy bomb in the northern city of Mosul lured police into the path of another bomb, which killed at least nine people and wounded three.
A car packed with explosives drove into a US convoy on Baghdad’s notorious airport road, killing five Iraqis and wounding four US contract workers. An internet statement purportedly from al-Qaeda in Iraq claimed its ”martyrs” carried out the attack.
Three other blasts rocked the capital, including an attack on a fuel tanker which damaged two US Humvee escorts.
Ake is believed to have been snatched at around noon on Monday while at work at a water treatment plant near Baghdad. News agencies reported he was the head of Equipment Express, which builds machines that fill containers with cooking oil and water.
At least five American hostages have been killed in Iraq, including Nicholas Berg, a civilian contractor from Pennsylvania who was beheaded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s al-Qaeda in Iraq group.
Unusually for such videos, Ake’s abductors did not display banners or identify their group, raising the possibility that he was taken by a criminal gang posing as Islamist radicals.
The hostage ”urged the US administration to open a dialogue with the Iraqi resistance to save his life”, al-Jazeera said.
The White House spokesperson, Scott McClellan, said officials were in contact with Ake’s family. Asked if the administration would talk to insurgents, McClellan said: ”Our position is well known when it comes to negotiating … Obviously this is a sensitive matter and it’s a high priority for us.”
The broadcast coincided with a visit to Iraq by the US Deputy Secretary of State, Robert Zoellick. He was due to tour the former rebel stronghold of Fallujah, which was destroyed in a US offensive in November. But apart from a meeting with civic leaders at a military base, security concerns confined him to armoured vehicles. – Guardian Unlimited Â