PARIS, Aug 29 (AFP) - France said early Sunday it was "more than ever mobilized" after two French journalists were taken hostage in Iraq by Islamic militants demanding the rescinding of a ban on the Islamic headscarf in French schools.
The interior ministry announced a meeting had been called Sunday of the French Committee of the Muslim Faith (CFCM) by Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin.
A spokesman for the foreign ministry said in a statement: "More than ever the services of the French embassy in Baghdad, like the French authorities, are mobilized.
"Once again we call for the liberation of the two French journalists" Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, he went on, adding that the ministry would not make any further comment at this stage.
Meanwhile the interior minister called for a meeting at 11 am (0900 GMT) of the CFCM, an umbrella body for the Muslim faith in France, to discuss the hostage taking. His ministry gave no further details about the meeting.
CFCM chairman Dalil Boubakeur said he was "shattered" by the "unworthy and odious blackmail" carried out by an Islamic group that kidnapped the two newsmen and demanded an end to the law on secularity in schools.
Editors at the news organizations the two worked for expressed concern about their fate, but said they were relieved the pair were alive.
Chesnot, of Radio France and Radio France Internationale, and Malbrunot of Le Figaro and Ouest France dailies, went missing on August 20 after leaving Baghdad for the Iraqi Shiite holy city of Najaf, where US forces were fighting Shiite Muslim militiamen.
The Qatar-based Arabic-language Al-Jazeera television showed two brief clips of the journalists saying they were being held by the group "Islamic Army in Iraq".
The group is demanding that "France rescinds within 48 hours the law banning" Islamic headscarves in schools, describing the law as "an injustice and an attack on the Islamic religion and individual freedoms," Al-Jazeera said.