Video shows captive soldier

BAGHDAD — An Arabic news channel yesterday showed footage of a 20-year-old American soldier in desert camouflage sitting on the floor and surrounded by masked gunmen.

“My name is Keith Matthew Maupin. I am a soldier from the 1st Division,” the hostage says in the video. “I am married with a 10-month-old child. 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.” Pfc. Maupin, of Batavia, Ohio, was listed as missing in action after the April 9 attack on a convoy near Baghdad.

He spoke in a soft voice, occasionally looking down in grainy video that also shows fighters with their faces wrapped in keffiyeh scarves.

A second soldier, Sgt. Elmer C. Krause, 40, of Greensboro, N.C., is also listed as missing along with seven persons who worked as private contractors for an American firm. Both soldiers were with the Army Reserve 724th Transportation Company, which is based in Bartonville, Ill.

Seven civilians also disappeared after the convoy attack near Abu Ghraib, including Thomas Hamill, 43, a truck driver from Mississippi, the only other American known to have been captured.

Their disappearance was part of a wave of kidnappings of foreigners that began with the attack by Marines on Fallujah earlier this month in an operation to crush militancy there and catch those who killed and mutilated the bodies of four Americans.

A growing exodus of foreigners sparked by the kidnappings continued yesterday, with major news organizations making plans to cut staff in Iraq or pull out entirely.

U.S. military and city officials negotiated directly with officials in Fallujah for the first time yesterday in an attempt to end fighting there in which hundreds of people have died.

The Marines hold about one-fourth of the city, located 30 miles west of Baghdad, that has been a major center of resistance against coalition forces.

In Fallujah, a unilateral suspension of offensive operations begun a week ago continued while insurgents attacked Marine positions four times, the military said yesterday. Marines also discovered optical scopes that are needed to turn AK-47 rifles into weapons for long-range sniper attacks, as well as armor-piercing bullets, hidden within sacks of grain, rice and tea in a truck bound for Fallujah.

The man detained for transporting the weapons was wearing a poorly made fake Red Crescent uniform in an attempt to make the convoy look legitimate, the military said.

Separately, U.S. officials signaled there are no immediate plans to send troops into the holy city of Najaf, part of a separate campaign to arrest anti-American cleric Sheik Muqtada al-Sadr and destroy his armed militia. About 2,400 troops have been massed outside the city for days.

“Najaf is not the target. Muqtada al-Sadr remains the target,” said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of operations for the U.S. led-coalition.

Speaking after delivering a sermon yesterday in a mosque in Kufa, near Najaf, Sheik al-Sadr said he would never disband his militia, which controls parts of several cities in central and southern Iraq.

He also urged all groups holding hostages to set them free.

An Iranian envoy, who purportedly has been invited by the British to mediate with the Shi’ites, was in Najaf yesterday, but al-Sadr aides said he has not met with the young cleric.

U.S. officials in Baghdad rejected Iran’s offer to help mediate a crisis with Sheik al-Sadr.

“It is our position that there is no role for the Iranians to play middleman here in discussions between us and Sadr,” coalition spokesman Dan Senor told reporters.

On Thursday, State Department officials said they would not object to the British-Iranian initiative.

In the Northern city of Mosul, mortar attacks on a police station and an American base missed their targets, but killed eight Iraqis and injured 17, the coalition said.

A car bomb in Baqouba wounded one American soldier, who is expected to recover.

In the south, Sheik al-Sadr’s Mahdi’s Army fought a gunbattle with U.S. forces near Kufa, after attacking a convoy headed for Najaf. Five Iraqis were killed in the clash.

Rebels continued to attack on roads in and out of Baghdad, setting trucks and tankers ablaze, a main reason for Pentagon plans to increase U.S. troop strength.

“In the city of Baghdad, the main problem continues to be the routes in and out of Baghdad,” Gen. Kimmitt said.

“There is what we believe to be a concerted effort on the part of the enemy to try to interfere with our lines of communication, our main supply routes,” he said.

Washington plans to increase U.S. troop strength, mainly by extending the tours for thousands of soldiers who had been scheduled to go home.

In other 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 in the south.

A Chinese citizen was released yesterday, two days after being taken captive, said Muthanna Harith, a member 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.

In Lisbon, Interior Minister Antonio Figueiredo Lopes said Portugal will consider pulling its peacekeeping police out of Iraq if the fighting there worsens.

Portugal has 128 police officers on peacekeeping duty in Nasiriyah in southern Iraq.

• This article is based in part on wire-service reports.