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Russia calls for release of diplomats

Vladimir Radyuhin

MOSCOW: Russia has called for the immediate release of four Russian diplomats abducted in Iraq as a group linked to Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the kidnapping.

Claim abduction

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow was taking "fully serious" reports that the Mujahedeen Shura Council, an umbrella group for several Islamist militant outfits in Iraq including Al-Qaeda, had kidnapped four Russian diplomats and killed a fifth in Baghdad two weeks ago.

"We are calling on the kidnappers again to release the Russian diplomats and to cause them no harm," Mr. Lavrov said on Tuesday.

In a statement posted on Monday on a website used by Iraqi jihadis the Mujahedeen Shura Council said the council's Islamic court had decided to give the Russian Government 48 hours to "withdraw immediately from Chechnya" and "release all our brothers and sisters detained in Russian prisons."

One Russian diplomat was killed and four others were kidnapped when unidentified gunmen attacked a Russian embassy car in Baghdad on June 3.

This is the second such incident involving Russian nationals in Iraq. Two years ago, three Russians and five Ukrainians working for an energy company in Iraq were briefly abducted and released after their kidnappers found out that their captives were "Russian".

This time Moscow has again pressed the point that Russia had sided with the Iraqi people in opposing the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. "Russia did all it could to avoid the situation in which Iraq is today," Mr. Lavrov said.

Such treatment of Russian diplomats is unfair and is not in the interests of the Iraqi people."

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