Romanian Journalists Kidnapped in Iraq

Romanian President Traian Basescu today called on coalition forces in Iraq to help secure the release of three journalists who were kidnapped last night.

The missing journalists, reporter Marie Jeanne Ion and cameraman Sorin Dumitru Miscoci from Bucharest-based television station Prima TV and Ovidiu Ohanesian, who works for daily Romania Libera, were snatched by unknown abductors in Baghdad's al-Mansur district.

"We have alerted all the secret services and the foreign intelligence services of our allies to solve the case," Mr Basescu told the Romanian TVR1 television after the three journalist were snatched on Monday night.

Prima TV said Ion had made a mobile phone call to the station shortly after the three were abducted.

"Don't kill us, we are from a poor country and we have no money," Ion was quoted as saying.

She later sent a text message to the station, saying "Help, this is not a joke, we've been kidnapped."

Prima TV's director, Dan Dumitru, later told Romanian television channel Realitatea TV, that Ion was "begging to be left alone".

"Their translator said that they were from Romania, a poor country and don't have money to pay a ransom. All I know they have been taken by force and we can't reach them any more," Mr Dumitru said.

The disappearance of the three Romanians is just the latest kidnaping incident involving journalists in Iraq.

Earlier this month Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena was freed after the intervention of the Italian secret service, after nearly four weeks as a captive.

But Nicola Calipari, the international operations chief of Italy's military intelligence service who masterminded her release, was shot and killed by US troops at a checkpoint as Sgrena was being driven to Baghdad airport.

In January Liberation correspondent Florence Aubenas and her translator, Hussein Hanoun al-Saadi, were snatched outside a Baghdad hotel and are still missing.

And Christian Chesnot, a freelance journalist kidnapped in Iraq while working for Radio France International and Georges Malbrunot, Le Figaro's Iraq correspondent, were released just before Christmas, after more than four months in captivity.