Emergency law extended; French woman journalist disappeared
Iraq-Africa, Politics, 1/7/2005

The French Foreign Ministry yesterday confirmed news of the disappearance of the delegate of the French "Liberation" news paper to Baghdad, Florence Obeina. The paper said in a statement it had lost contacts with Obeina and her Iraqi translator Hussein Hanoun al-Saadi since they had left the hotel in Baghdad on Wednesday morning.

The paper said that since 24 hours contacts stopped with Obeina who arrived in Iraq in December, 2004 to prepare a report on the women to be taking part in the Iraqi elections and that she has been preparing research about the Falluja evacuees.

Two French journalists were kidnapped in Iraq for four months and were released in December.

However, in an attempt to enhance security prior to the elections, the Interim Iraqi prime minister Eyad Allawi decided to extend the emergency law in the country for 30 more days in all cities of Iraq, except Kurdistan district in the north.

Allawi described this steps as a preventive measure to protect the Iraqi people in the forthcoming election. This came at a time when an American report indicated that the performance of the Iraqi security forces is still insufficient despite the so far achieved progress.

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