DHAKA, Oct 30 (AFP) - Dhaka has appealed for the release of a Bangladeshi truck driver taken hostage in Iraq, saying the Muslim-majority South Asian nation is not involved in the ongoing strife there, a report said.
"Bangladesh is a peace-loving nation; we are not involved in any conflict," Foreign Minister M Morshed Khan told the private UNB news agency late Friday.
"I make an appeal on behalf of 140 million Muslims to the hostage takers to release the poor Bangladeshi driver," he said.
Khan pledged an "all out" effort by the government to secure the driver’s release and said senior Bangladeshi diplomats in countries neighbouring Iraq were doing all they could.
The government identified the captured man as 42-year-old Abul Kashem, whom it said had been working for a Kuwaiti company for about five years before he was abducted. It is not known from which part of Bangladesh he came.
Al-Jazeera television said Thursday that two drivers, a Bangladeshi and a Sri Lankan, had been captured on their way to a US base in Iraq.
"The Bangladeshi who was abducted in Iraq was working for a Kuwaiti company called Al-Jashem and now we are checking how he ended up there," Bangladesh minister for overseas employment Mohammad Quamrul Islam told AFP.
"We have asked the International Red Crescent Society and International Organisation for Migration to help us to locate and rescue that person," Islam said.
Al-Jazeera showed footage late Thursday of the drivers in captivity and said they were being held by a group called the Islamic Army in Iraq.
Bangladesh, the world’s third largest Muslim-majority nation, opposed the US-led invasion of Iraq and has repeatedly said it would only send troops to Iraq under UN auspices.
Polls suggest the public views Washington with suspicion.
Truckers have been a favourite target of militant groups in Iraq, with many being taken hostage over the past few months in a bid to force their companies out of Iraq.
In some cases, ransoms have been paid to secure their release.
Bangladesh is one of the world’s poorest nations. Some 200,000 Bangladeshis, driven by desperate poverty and unemployment at home, go abroad in search of work each year.
Remittances by the migrant workforce are Bangladesh’s second main source of foreign exchange earnings.
The Islamic Army in Iraq is also holding two French journalists who were abducted south of Baghdad on August 20 with their Syrian driver.
It also kidnapped and executed an Italian journalist.
