LONDON, Oct 22 (AFP) - The Iraqi husband of the kidnapped Baghdad head of international relief agency CARE criticized British Prime Minister Tony Blair for commenting on his wife's abduction, saying it could put her in even greater danger, in an interview published here Friday.
"Blair keeps on saying that his government is attempting to get Margaret freed. I do not know why the British keep on bringing this matter up so publicly," Tahsine Ali Hassan told the British newspaper The Independent.
"In the current situation it is not good for the people holding her to think she is British," he added.
Hassan stressed that his wife, the director of Iraq operations for CARE International and a resident for 30 years in the country, was a naturalized Iraqi citizen.
"I have been saying all the time that she was born in Ireland and she considers herself Iraqi."
Margaret Hassan, 59, was taken hostage on Tuesday as she drove to her office in western Baghdad.
Blair pledged this week to do everything possible to secure her release, but her husband accused the prime minister of using her to promote his own politics.
British officials, he said, "are making some statements about the people holding her which could provoke them. I don't think it is all just about Margaret, it is do with Britain's own agenda, it is a kind of propaganda."
He told The Independent that despite official British comment on Hassan's case, he had not been contacted by the government.
"If the British are doing something to free Margaret, I am afraid no one has told me what it is," he said.
However, Tahsine Ali Hassan said he had been in touch with Ireland, which has also called for Margaret Hassan's release and publicly announced that the aid worker was born in Ireland and thus had Irish citizenship.
Ireland, which was neutral during the Iraq war, also publicized the Irish heritage of Kenneth Bigley, a British contractor taken hostage and beheaded in Iraq earlier in October.
Margaret Hassan, though born in Ireland, was raised in Britain. She has spent nearly half her life in Iraq, and was a vocal opponent of the US-British invasion in March 2003.
Tahsine Ali Hassan told AFP Thursday he was cautiously optimistic his wife would be released quickly given her long years of service to the people of Iraq.
He also said he did not know whether Margaret, who never converted to Islam, was abducted for financial or political motives. The identity of her kidnappers is not known.

10/22/2004 01:28 GMT - AFP