ISLAMABAD - Pakistan said Sunday that an official who went missing from its embassy in Iraq has been kidnapped.
Malik Mohammad Javed, an assistant who does not have diplomatic status, went missing on Saturday night after going to a mosque for evening prayers.
"Javed had since been in contact with charge d'affaires Mohamed Iftikhar Anjum and said he has been kidnapped but he has not been harmed," said foreign ministry spokesman Jalil Abbas Jilani.
A ministry statement said persons claiming to be members of the Omar bin Khattab group had apparently kidnapped the official.
Anjum was in "constant touch" with Iraqi authorities and local leaders to secure the release of Javed, the statement said.
Information Minister Sheik Rashid told AFP the government was making "utmost efforts" to ensure the official's release.
"We are trying our best and are in constant contact with the Iraqi government for tracing his whereabouts," Rashid said.
The Iraqi envoy in Islamabad had been summoned to the foreign ministry to be told of Pakistan's concern, he said.
Javed went missing after evening prayers in the western Amariya district of the capital, Anjum told AFP in Baghdad.
Police confirmed the official had disappeared in the neighborhood, an area considered sympathetic to Iraq's deadly insurgency.
Around 200 foreigners have been taken hostage in Iraq since last April when twin Shiite-Sunni uprisings shook the country and insurgents and criminals started to use kidnapping as a political tool.
Many kidnappings are motivated by cash. Often abductors will sell captives with political value to militant groups.
Two migrant workers from a poor village in Pakistani Kashmir were killed in July last year in Iraq after their captors alleged they were spying for the United States and that Pakistan was planning to deploy troops in Iraq.
Another Pakistani, Amjad Hafeez, was released on July 2 last year after eight days of captivity.
Hafeez, who was working as a driver for a US company, said he was captured while returning from work and was taken blindfolded to a house.
Pakistan opposed the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. Even though it is a key ally in the US war on terror it has refused to send troops there, despite requests from the US and the Iraqi leadership for help in guarding United Nations missions.
The UN mission in Iraq is headed by a Pakistani diplomat, Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, who was appointed as the secretary general's special envoy in July last year.
04/10/2005 12:03 GMT