BAGHDAD - The US government raced Thursday to find hostage Jeffrey Ake, who was shown pleading for his life in a video aired on Arab satellite television channel Al-Jazeera the previous day.
"We remain actively engaged," in trying to find Ake, a US official in Baghdad said on condition of anonymity.
"We are committed to doing everything possible to try to find him."
Ake, flanked by three masked and armed men, called on Washington to "open a dialogue with the Iraqi resistance" to save his life in the video footage aired Wednesday by the Qatar-based channel.
He also urged US forces promptly to leave Iraq, as he cried holding what looked like a passport and identification card to his chest.
The White House said the safety of the hostage was "a high priority" but indicated the United States would not negotiate with his captors.
Ake's appearance on Al-Jazeera was a throwback to videos from last year showing desperate Westerners begging for their lives before being beheaded by their captors after coalition governments failed to meet militants' demands.
US contractor Nicholas Berg, who was kidnapped in April 2004, was the first hostage in Iraq to be shown beheaded on video in May 2004.
The foreign kidnappings crescendoed in October, when British hostage Ken Bigley was beheaded and British-Iraqi aid chief Margaret Hassan was kidnapped. Hassan's murder was announced in mid-November and shown in a video, but her body was never found.
Bigley's two US colleagues Jack Armstrong and Jack Hensely were beheaded in September and their last moments captured on video.
At least four other Americans are still counted as missing. A soldier, Private First Class Keith Matthew Maupin, 20, was abducted in an attack on a convoy near Baghdad on April 9, 2004. A video later purported to show his "execution," but Washington called the film "inconclusive".
Kellogg, Brown and Root employee Timothy Bell is still counted as missing after being snatched in the same attack.
US contractor Roy Hallum who was working for a Saudi firm, was taken at gunpoint with two other foreigners from their Baghdad offices on November 1. On January 25, Al-Jazeera broadcast a videotape in which a man identified as Hallum begged Arab leaders to secure his release.
An American-Iraqi businessman Mohamed Munaf was kidnapped on March 28, along with three Romanian journalists -- Marie-Jeanne Ion, journalist for Prima TV, her cameraman Sorin Miscoci and the correspondent of the newspaper Romania Libera, Eduard Ohanesian.
In addition, Florence Aubenas, a correspondent for the French daily Liberation, and her translator Hussein Hanun al-Saadi were kidnapped on January 5.
Since April 2004, around 200 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq.
04/14/2005 16:12 GMT