Iraq

Tape shows soldier held captive

Gunmen say they want to trade the 20-year-old from Ohio for comrades held by occupation forces.

[Al-Jazeera television via AP] Army Pfc. Keith Maupin appeared to be unharmed in a videotape.

BAGHDAD - Videotape broadcast Friday showed a tense and frightened U.S. soldier held captive by masked gunmen who said they want to trade him for comrades imprisoned by the occupation forces.

Pfc. Keith Maupin, 20, was the first U.S. serviceman and second American confirmed kidnapped in a recent wave of abductions in Iraq. Wearing a floppy desert hat, he sat on the floor and appeared unharmed in the footage aired on the Arab TV station Al-Jazeera.

"My name is Keith Matthew Maupin. I am a soldier from the 1st Division," he said. "I am married with a 10-month-old son. I came to liberate Iraq, but I did not come willingly because I wanted to stay with my child."

During the video, one of the gunmen was heard saying: "We are keeping him to be exchanged for some of the prisoners captured by the occupation forces."

"Some of our groups managed to capture one of the American soldiers, and he is one of many others. He is being treated according to the treatment of prisoners in the Islamic religion and he is in good health," the gunman said on the tape, a copy of which was dropped off at the U.S. Embassy in Doha, Qatar.

About two dozen foreigners have been abducted in the past week amid the worst violence Iraq has seen since the U.S.-led invasion on March 20, 2003. U.S. military officials have reported capturing more than 80 insurgents in fighting since April 1.

Maupin of Batavia, Ohio, and Sgt. Elmer C. Krause, 40, of Greensboro, N.C., were listed as missing after their convoy was attacked April 9 outside Baghdad amid a wave of kidnappings blamed on anti-U.S. insurgents.

Seven private U.S. contractors also disappeared after the convoy attack, including Thomas Hamill, a 43-year-old truck driver from Mississippi, the only other American known to have been captured. American experts were working to determine whether four bodies discovered west of Baghdad were the remains of some of the missing.

Most of the recent kidnappings appear to have been carried out by Sunni groups, though a few foreigners have been taken by Shiites in the south. U.S. officials are struggling to determine whether there is a central hand behind the various hostage-takers.

In the latest bloodshed, U.S. troops skirmished with Shiite militiamen near the southern city of Kufa; five Iraqis died. In the north, mortars fired by insurgents killed eight Iraqi civilians in Mosul.

Elsewhere, there were signs of progress in ending the violence in the besieged city of Fallujah with the first direct negotiations between U.S. officials and city leaders.

The military agreed to reposition troops to give residents better access to the city's hospital, but U.S. negotiators were pressing the Fallujah leaders to get insurgents to abide by a cease-fire.

The top civilian negotiator warned that time was running short for talks. "I must be candid ... time is limited," said Richard Jones, deputy director of the U.S. coalition authority. "We cannot just sit and allow the situation to continue the way it is."

Meanwhile, Iraq's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, warned the U.S. military against entering the holy city of Najaf to capture a radical cleric wanted for murder.

U.S. Maj. Gen. John Sattler said the 2,500 U.S. troops deployed on the edge of the southern city would not move in for now. Negotiations are under way to find a compromise.

The wanted cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, took a defiant tone, preaching while wearing a shroud symbolizing his willingness to die and warning that negotiations were near collapse.

"I am ready to meet martyrdom for the sake of Iraq," al-Sadr said Friday.

Maupin and the other missing soldier are assigned to the Army Reserve's 724th Transportation Company, based at Bartonville, Ill.

On the tape, the gunmen's faces are covered by keffiyeh scarves. They stand behind Maupin, in contrast to footage aired last week of three Japanese hostages in which their kidnappers held knives to their throats as they screamed. The Japanese were freed unharmed.

At the Maupin home in Ohio, 15 miles east of Cincinnati, a friend read a statement from the family but declined to answer questions.

"We'd like to say, "Matt, we love you and we can't wait until we get to hug you again,"' said Carl Cottrell II, the boyfriend of Maupin's sister.

He wore a yellow ribbon pinned to his shirt and was flanked by military officers.

In investigating the various abductions, the U.S. military has seen "loose coordination" among them, said Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy head of operations in Iraq.

At least 17 foreigners, according to an Associated Press tally, remain unaccounted for in the recent wave of abductions. In other related developments:

Three Czech journalists and a Syrian-Canadian aid worker were freed by their captors. All said they were in good health. The Czechs had been missing since Sunday after checking out of their hotel to leave for Jordan by taxi.

A man from the United Arab Emirates and a Danish businessman were reported kidnapped.

A Chinese citizen was released Friday, two days after being taken captive, said Muthanna Harith of the Islamic Clerics Committee, the highest Sunni organization in Iraq.

The clerics' committee also helped free the three Japanese Thursday. That day, however, an Italian security guard was killed in captivity.

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