US, Iraq disagree on woman prisoner

With time running out to save a British hostage in Iraq, US officials said on Wednesday they were not about to free Iraqi women prisoners as...

With time running out to save a British hostage in Iraq, US officials said on Wednesday they were not about to free Iraqi women prisoners as demanded by an Al Qaeda ally whose group has beheaded two Americans.

The British government, saying it had no contact with the kidnappers and would not negotiate, said it had little hope Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi would spare 62-year-old Kenneth Bigley after the body of American Jack Hensley was recovered.

The Iraqi government said judges had ruled that one of two weapons scientists — the only women Washington says it holds — should be given a conditional release, but only in a few days.

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It was unclear, in any case, whether the Tawhid and Jihad group’s demand for all women to be freed even referred to this pair at all. Zarqawi, a Jordanian who analysts say seems bent on sending horrifying signals to Westerners through Internet videos of his beheadings, has never mentioned them specifically.

‘‘It would be idle to pretend that there is a great deal of hope,’’ British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said, adding that Bigley’s family were ‘‘preparing themselves for the worst’’.

In a statement announcing Hensley’s killing on Tuesday, 24 hours after Eugene Armstrong was shown being beheaded, the group set no deadline for his government to save Bigley. But its previous ultimatums have rarely lasted more than a day or two.

The three building contractors were snatched from a house in Baghdad on Thursday. Like his colleague’s, the body of Hensley, who would have turned 49 on Wednesday, was found by a roadside. The Iraqi Justice Ministry said one of the two women in US custody in Iraq, Rihab Taha, could be freed later in the day.

	Iraq asks Pak for troops

	• UNITED NATIONS: Iraqi interim PM Iyad Allawi said on Tuesday that he had pressed Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to contribute troops to the US-led multinational force in Iraq. Pakistan has not replied. Allawi told reporters that he had spoken to Musharraf. ‘‘And I’ll be talking to him again,’’ he added. ‘‘We hope that Pakistan will be able to help,’’ said Allawi. —Reuters Story continues below this ad

But the US Embassy said later that Taha and Huda Ammash, dubbed ‘‘Dr Germ’’ and ‘‘Mrs Anthrax’’ respectively by US forces, would not be released soon. ‘‘The two women are in legal and physical custody of the multinational forces in Iraq and neither will be released imminently,’’ a spokesman said.

Kassim Daoud, the Iraqi government’s national security adviser, later said Taha was one of three detainees who may be given conditional release later in the month.

Meanwhile, a suicide bomber detonated his vehicle in a crowded Baghdad street as dozens of men wanting to join the security forces queued up to photocopy their documents.

Officials at Baghdad’s Yarmuk hospital said 11 people were killed. Another bomber targeted a US checkpoint in Baghdad, witnesses said. Police said three people were wounded. A Canadian woman was freed after two weeks in captivity, Ottawa said on Wednesday. She had not been reported missing. —Reuters