by Kamal Taha
BAGHDAD, July 27 (AFP) - Iraq`s president vowed Tuesday to not cave in to insurgents who have sparked a kidnapping crisis, although the employer of two Jordanian hostages said it would leave the country to save them.
In the face of a raging insurgency and a wave of kidnappings aimed at pressuring the new US-backed government and forcing out foreign troops and interests, President Sheikh Ghazi al-Yawar vowed no compromise.
"We will never give in to their demands or negotiate with them," Yawar told reporters after meeting with tribal chiefs from the restive western province of Al-Anbar, where many of the hostages are suspected of being held.
"Whoever the hostage, we won`t pay a single cent or make any concessions." But a Jordanian transport firm, Daoud and Partners, which supplies the US military in Iraq, said it was ending its business in the country to try to save two of its drivers, Ahmed Salameh Hussein, 34, and Fayez Saad al-Adwan, 58.
"We have taken this decision for humanitarian reasons and out of a concern to assure the safety of our staff and obtain the release of our two drivers," executive director Rami al-Uweiss told AFP in Amman.
The kidnappers of the Jordanians have reportedly given the company 72 hours to halt its operations in Iraq. They have threatened to execute the men.
Countries whose citizens have been caught up in the hostage crisis also continued to appeal for their freedom.
In Islamabad, President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain jointly appealed for the release of two Pakistanis threatened with death by Islamic militants.
Islamabad said the pair had no connection with international politics, were not working for US forces and their kidnapping had put the Pakistani people in deep agony.
Azad Hussein Khan, a maintenance engineer and Sajjad Naeem, a driver, were kidnapped on Friday by a group calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq.
Likewise, Kenya and Egypt made fresh appeals for the release of four of the hostage citizens, among a group of seven truck drivers snatched six days ago.
Nairobi said the three Kenyans had simply been trying to earn a living.
"We wish to reiterate that Kenya has no troops, observers, official presence or companies in Iraq and did not take sides during the Iraqi conflict," said Foreign Minister Chirau Ali Mwakwere.
A tribal leader and self-styled mediator, Sheikh Hisham al-Dulaimi, urged the Kuwaiti employer of the seven captive drivers and embassies to make contact and negotiate for their release.
"If the Kuwaiti company were concerned with the humanitarian aspect of this case -- and I think it is -- then it would come and negotiate," Dulaimi said, expressing fear for the lives of the truckers.
Cairo, meanwhile, thanked all those who had helped broker the release of an Egyptian diplomat, Mohamed Mamdouh Kotb, and said it will continue efforts to secure the release of one of its truckers being held among the seven.
Kotb said he was taken hostage because the Islamic militants were disappointed at the state of Egypt-Iraq relations. "These people are Islamists, definitely, they are not common criminals," he said after he was released.
Fighting continued as an early morning mortar attack killed a rubbish collector and wounded 14 US soldiers and a civilian in residential neighborhood of Baghdad, the US military said.
In the restive city of Baquba, an Iraqi was killed when a car bomb went off at a roundabout infamous for attacks, it said.
Later, nine people, including three children, were injured in the town of Baladruz, southeast of Baquba, in a roadside bombing targeting a US military convoy, said doctor Mohammed Abdul Hadi of Baquba`s general hospital.
An Iraqi national guardsman was shot in the head at point blank range and found dumped in the city of Samarra, said a local medic.
In the insurgent bastion of Fallujah, west of the capital, six Iraqis, including two women and a little girl, were wounded by gunfire, that residents blamed on US forces, police said.
The US military also said it arrested eight Iraqis suspected of kidnapping Arabs and Kurds in the ethnically-tense northern city of Kirkuk, and an associate of wanted Al-Qaeda suspect Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi.
Meanwhile, Iraq`s first democratic experiment in decades, a conference to appoint a consultative council to the interim government, is set to open on Saturday, an official said.