LONDON, Sept 23 (AFP) - However desperate the appeals by relatives of Kenneth Bigley, the British engineer held hostage in Iraq, terrorism experts said Thursday there was little that Prime Minister Tony Blair's government could do to resolve the crisis.
Bigley, 62, appeared almost certain to face execution at the hands of his Islamic extremist captors, who are demanding the release of female Iraqi prisoners -- and who have already decapitated two US hostages.
Bigley's brothers and son have begged Blair to do whatever necessary to meet the demands. So has Bigley himself, in a tearful appeal filmed by the kidnappers and posted on the Internet.
But experts stressed that acceding to extremists' demands was something a government could simply not be seen to do.
"Most people understand. Most people accept that you cannot do business with hostage-takers," said Alex Standish, editor of the specialist Jane's Intelligence Digest.
"If you do, you are inviting them to continue an illegal and murderous activity which, in the end, will lead to more deaths," Standish told AFP.
Blair had virtually no room for maneouvre, however much the Bigley family might implore him to intervene, said Paul Wilkinson, head of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at St Andrews University in Scotland.
"The desperate and passionate plea from his family will have touched the hearts of millions but of course the British government has to be ruled by its head rather than it's heart," Wilkinson told Sky News television.
"If Britain broke ranks with the (US-led) coalition (in Iraq) and gave in to terrorist intimidation in this way, then there would be a pandemic of kidnapping," Wilkinson said.
"We've got an epidemic in Iraq of very serious proportions and there would be a massive surge and all the civilians and military personnel, not only British but international personnel in Iraq, would be put at greater danger."
Additionally, even if Blair did decide to do business with the kidnappers, such is the chaos in Iraq at present that this might prove extremely difficult.
Unlike a wave of hostage-taking in the 1980s during Lebanon's civil war, there were "not so clearly defined channels of communication", said Standish.
"These groups (in Iraq) communicate primarily using the Internet and their websites," he explained, saying there was "a great plethora" of organisations holding hostages.
"A lot of these groups have completely contradictory aims."
Another option -- a rescue attempt by crack commando units -- was similarly unlikely, Standish argued, saying that the one slim hope came if the particular group of hostage-takers happened to have been penetrated by Western intelligence agencies.
"In this anarchic situation we have in some parts of Iraq, it will be almost impossible for special forces to make a rescue unless they had hard information that came just at the right moment," he said.
The position in Iraq was "a very different phenomenon" to other hostage crises seen over recent decades, Standish noted.
"What we are seeing now in Iraq is very much an ideological battle. This is not a battle by factional warlords interested in making personal gains" as was the case in Lebanon.
The main objectives were to attract maximum publicity and to frighten foreigners in Iraq, "because by so doing it will undermine both reconstruction efforts and the possibility of stabilising the interim government ahead of elections", he said.
"In both respects it is achieving those aims."