WASHINGTON, July 27 (AFP) - The United States said Tuesday it had no information to suggest that Egypt paid a large ransom to insurgents in Iraq to free one of its diplomats kidnapped in Baghdad.
The State Department said Washington understood from Egyptian officials that they had not made concessions to the abductors of Mohamed Mamdouh Kotb, the third-ranking diplomat at Cairo's embassy in Baghdad who was released late Monday after three days in captivity.
"We are pleased that Mr Momdouh Kotb was released unharmed and is back at work," deputy spokesman Adam Ereli told reporters. "All our information is that the Egyptian government remains steadfast in this matter.
"Our information is that the Egyptian government did not make concessions," he said when asked about a CNN report that quoted an unnamed security source in Baghdad as saying Egypt had paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to win Kotb's freedom.
An Egyptian foreign ministry official had earlier denied the report while the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera satellite channel reported the militants turned down a ransom offer and decided to free Kotb because of his character and Muslim faith.
While welcoming Kotb's release, Ereli lamented a Jordanian firm's decision to halt operations in Iraq in line with demands of the abductors of two of its employees.
"This was, obviously, a difficult decision and one that the directors of this company felt that they had to take," he said.
"Our views are well known," Ereli said. "We do not make concessions to terrorists and we do not feel that that is the best way to fight terror. The best way to fight terror is to stand firm against the terrorists."
The executive director of the company, Daoud and Partners, said earlier Tuesday that the firm would cease operations in Iraq for "humanitarian reasons and out of a concern to assure the safety of our staff and obtain the release of our two drivers."
The drivers, Ahmad Salameh Hussein and Fayez Saad al-Adwan, were kidnapped in Iraq on Monday by a group which reportedly threatened them with death unless their employer stopped work in the country within 72 hours.
Daoud and Partners has provided food supplies to US troops in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion.