The body of a dead United States hostage, abducted in November, has been found in Iraq as US President George Bush acknowledged the gravity of mounting unrest there and called on Iraqi leaders to form a national unity government quickly.
The body of Tom Fox, a 54-year-old peace activist from Virginia, abducted along with two Canadians and a British colleague on November 26 in Baghdad, has been found and identified, the US State Department said late on Friday.
His three colleagues from the Chicago-based Christian Peacemaker Teams, a group that dispatches volunteers to crisis areas in a bid to reduce armed conflict, had appeared without him in a video broadcast on Tuesday by al-Jazeera television.
Their abduction was claimed by a group calling itself the Brigades of the Swords of Righteousness, which threatened to kill them unless all Iraqi prisoners were released.
About 250 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion of the country, and about 40 of them have been killed.
”The FBI verified the identity of a body found in Iraq this morning. While additional forensics will be completed in the United States, they believe this is the body of Tom Fox,” State Department spokesperson Noel Clay said in Washington late on Friday.
Clay, who did not say where Fox’s body had been found, said the government called for the ”unconditional release of all hostages” held in Iraq.
Christian Peacemaker Teams repeated the call and said in a statement on its website that Fox’s death ”pierces us with pain”.
Claire Evans, a Christian Peacemakers delegation coordinator in Chicago, said the organisation does not know how or when Fox died.
The body was believed to have been found on Friday.
Meanwhile, Bush on Friday urged the quick formation of a unity government to stop violence from worsening amid growing sectarian tension between majority Shi’ites and minority Sunnis.
Asked what the US would do if there was a civil war, Bush said: ”Step one is to make sure, do everything we can that there not be one.”
Government
Bush reaffirmed the US administration’s repeated calls this week for rival parties quickly to form a government ”that reflects the diversity of the country”.
”We are going to continue to remind them that the sooner they can get a unity government up and running, the more confidence the people will have in their future,” he said.
With the third anniversary of the March 20 2003 invasion looming, the US administration said it plans a new campaign to convince the increasingly sceptical US public that the Iraq campaign has been worthwhile.
More than 2 300 US military personnel have been killed in Iraq since the invasion and polls indicate a majority of the US public believe the campaign was a mistake.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani on Friday summoned Parliament to meet on March 19 for its first session since the December general elections amid dire warnings that the protracted stalemate in forming the government is fanning sectarian unrest.
The head of the Kurdish autonomous region, Massud Barzani, invited top politicians to travel to his relatively peaceful enclave of Kurdistan for intensive talks in a bid to break the current deadlock over who should lead the new government.
Members of the dominant Shi’ite United Iraqi Alliance have reselected outgoing Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari for the job, but their choice has been rejected by both Kurds and Sunni Arabs.
The minority parties believe Jaafari, who has led the interim government since April last year, has done too little to stem sectarian violence, which has resulted in the deaths of more than 500 Iraqis since a Shi’ite shrine was bombed on February 22.
”Talks in Baghdad have reached what can only be described as a crisis point and we need a new start to get everyone talking again around one table,” Barzani said.
Any further delay ”could lead to a surge in violence and loss of trust by the Iraqi people in their elected representatives”, he added. — Sapa-AFP