BEIJING, Jan 23 (AFP) - Chinese officials were Sunday trying to track down eight nationals reportedly freed by their captors in Iraq, as Beijing pondered the risks of sending ever more workers abroad.
The exact whereabouts of the eight, all migrant workers kidnapped Tuesday on their way home from a construction project, remained unclear one day after Chinese state media confirmed their release.
"The Chinese embassy in Iraq is still trying to get in touch with the eight," a foreign ministry official in Beijing told AFP.
The Dubai-based Arabic news channel Al-Arabiya television station said Saturday that the eight men had been freed, citing a statement by their captors.
"The eight Chinese were freed and handed to the Committee of Muslim Scholars," a leading Sunni religious group in Iraq, a correspondent for the Dubai-based satellite channel reported from Baghdad.
Footage broadcast by Hong Kong`s Phoenix TV showed each of the eight dazed-looking Chinese hostages shaking hands with a masked captor, apparently after having been informed of their release.
"The hostages are free, it`s for real," a female employee at the embassy in Baghdad told the People`s Daily. "Now, we`re pretty anxious to get on with the follow-up work."
Iraqi Deputy President Rowsch Nuri Shaways, currently on a visit to China, said he was "very delighted" to hear the news of the release of the eight, according to state-run Xinhua news agency.
"(The relationship between) Iraq and China will have a splendid prospect," he was quoted by Xinhua as saying.
Even so, the eight men`s captors reportedly said China had promised not to send more of its nationals to Iraq in return for the release.
"The Chinese government showed its good intentions with the publication of a presidential decree banning Chinese citizens from entering Iraq," a statement from the captors said, according to Al-Arabiya.
"And the Movement of the Islamic Resistance Nuamaan Brigades decided to release the eight prisoners to confirm the friendly relations between the two countries," the statement said.
China`s foreign ministry said earlier it had already warned its citizens to stay out of Iraq.
"What I want to stress is that the Chinese government has previously issued warnings on many occasions to its citizens, requesting them not to travel to Iraq," the ministry`s spokesman Kong Quan said in a statement issued Friday.
The safety of Chinese nationals abroad has become a more important issue on the government`s agenda.
There are currently more than half a million Chinese employed overseas, according to official statistics, which probably underestimate the figures, as they have no way of counting huge numbers of illegal migrants.
Last June, 11 Chinese workers were killed shortly after arriving in Afghanistan to work on a road project.
01/23/2005 03:23 GMT - AFP