Downer pleads for kidnapped Australian

CANBERRA - Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has appealed directly to the kidnappers of Douglas Wood in an interview with the Arabic TV news channel Al Jazeera, warning that the 63-year-old Australian engineer has a serious heart condition.

The appeal, taped in New York, follows Canberra's acceptance that Wood's slim chance of survival rests largely with the intervention of religious and tribal leaders in Iraq, despite the arrival in Baghdad of a team of Australian negotiators.

Wood's brother Malcolm was also taping an appeal last night to be shown on Al Jazeera.

Wood was abducted last weekend, possibly from his Baghdad flat or on his way to work at the joint venture company set up to win military and civilian contracts under Iraq's post-war reconstruction programme.

His abductors have identified themselves as the Shura Council of the Mujahedeen of Iraq, a previously unknown name, and have made no contact since releasing a tape of Wood begging for his life.

In the tape Wood, sitting cross-legged and flanked by masked men armed with assault rifles, urged Australia, the United States and Britain to withdraw their troops.

Prime Minister John Howard, who recently deployed 450 more troops and armour to guard Japanese military engineers in southern Iraq, has said bluntly that Australia will neither pull out nor pay any ransom that might be demanded.

Downer said yesterday that while the Government could not prevent Wood's family or friends paying a ransom, any such payment could encourage further kidnappings.

"We have a lot of Australians in Iraq and we don't want Australia to get a reputation for being a country that pays ransoms, otherwise Australians will be kidnapped in order to get money," he said.

Downer took his appeal for Wood's release to the kidnappers through Al Jazeera, a 24-hour CNN-style channel watched by millions of Arabic speakers that came to global attention when taped messages were released through it by terror leader Osama bin Laden.

"[Wood] has been in Iraq helping to improve the lives of Iraqis and we would ask that he be released," Downer told an Al Jazeera interviewer.

"Mr Wood is not a well man. He has had significant heart problems and he has a wife and three brothers and a child, and he's 63, he wants to be able to see his family again, and we would appeal to the people who have taken him hostage to release him, and not to involve a man who is just providing assistance to the Iraqi people - not to involve him in politics, just to release him."

Wood worked for 25 years for the US construction company Bechtel before forming his own company and moving from his home in Alamo, California, to Iraq.

Shortly after his arrival he told Britain's Observer newspaper that he had seen real potential to build things and make things happen, and did not feel afraid for his life.

Wood grew up in Victoria, the son of a former moderator-general of Australia's Presbyterian Church, was educated at the exclusive Geelong College, and was a keen Australian Rules footballer and rower.