PARIS, Aug 30 (AFP) - French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat were to speak Monday on Arabic-language public radio station RMC Middle East about the two French journalists taken hostage in Iraq.
Barnier, currently in the Middle East on an urgent mission to help secure the release of the two newsmen, was to be interviewed from Cairo while Arafat was to speak from his West Bank headquarters in Ramallah.
RMC Middle East, which claims to be the second-most popular radio station in Baghdad, broadcasts in Arabic to Baghdad, the southern Iraqi city of Basra and Mosul in the north, as well as Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar and Sudan.
Antoine Schwarz, president of RMC Middle East`s parent company Radio France Internationale -- which employs one of the two kidnapped journalists -- was also scheduled to speak on the special program.
Late Saturday, a group calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq claimed it had kidnapped Radio France correspondent Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot of Le Figaro newspaper, who went missing in Iraq on August 20.
The shadowy Sunni Muslim group gave Paris 48 hours -- a deadline that was set to expire late Monday -- to rescind its controversial ban on the wearing of Islamic headscarves in state schools and universities.