TIRANA, Sept 7 (AFP) - French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier said on Tuesday he was convinced it was still possible to secure the release of two French journalists who have been held hostage in Iraq since August 20.
"The release of the French journalists is still possible and we are working to achieve that goal," Barnier told a news conference in the Albanian capital, Tirana.
"We continue to believe they will be freed and we are working prudently with everyone who wants to help us," he said.
"We are doing this discreetly for security reasons," Barnier said.
The minister said French representatives were in Baghdad, the Jordanian capital Amman and elsewhere in the region working to secure the release of Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot.
Barnier himself travelled to the Middle East last week to secure their liberation but returned to Paris on Saturday with no news of any release date.
The minister was in Albania on Tuesday on the last leg of a trip that also took him to Kosovo and Macedonia.
Earlier in the day, while he was still in the Macedonian capital, Skopje, Barnier had said he was prepared to return to Jordan "at any moment" to help free the journalists.
The militant group that kidnapped Chesnot and Malbrunot, the Islamic Army of Iraq, had initially demanded that the Paris government rescind a ban on the wearing of Islamic headscarves in French state schools.
On Monday, a statement purportedly from the kidnappers was posted on an Islamist website, giving France 48 hours to accept three new conditions for the journalists' release -- agreeing to a recent truce offer by Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, payment of five million dollars ransom and a pledge not to get involved in Iraq.
Chesnot, 37, of Radio France Internationale, Malbrunot, 41, of the daily Le Figaro, and their Syrian driver were taken hostage on August 20.