French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier is arriving in the Middle East on Monday in a bid to solve a hostage crisis in which two French journalists are being held in Iraq.
The hostage-takers are demanding that France rescinds a law that bans Islamic headscarves in French state schools. In March, France passed the law which bans any conspicuous religious symbols, including large Christian crosses and Jewish skullcaps, in public schools.
The headscarves law goes into effect on Wednesday, with the beginning of the school year.
The demands differ from previous cases of hostage-taking in Iraq, in which kidnappers demanded that members of the U.S.-led coalition remove their troops, companies leave Iraq, or that the kidnappers be given large sums of money.
The Qatar-based Arabic language channel Al-Jazeera aired a video on Saturday, which showed the journalists held by a group calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq. The group gave Paris 48 hours to meet their demands.
Barnier will be arriving in Egypt to make the necessary contacts, to coordinate efforts and try to win the reporters’ release.
French officials have not said they are likely to yield to the abductors’ demands.
French President Jacques Chirac said, “The whole nation is gathered together, because what’s at stake is the lives of two French people, the defense of freedom of expression, and also the values of our Republic.”
Muslim leaders in France have also condemned the abductions and urged the French government not to capitulate to the abductors’ demands, even though they oppose the law on headscarves.