BERN - Switzerland's foreign minister on Tuesday summoned the US ambassador to explain the death in Iraq of a Swiss businessman who was shot and killed by an American soldier.
Micheline Calmy-Rey informed ambassador Pamela Willeford of her concern over the shooting last week in Baghdad, and asked Washington for a rapid clarification, ministry spokesman Ivo Sieber said.
On Sunday, Switzerland said the United States had expressed its regrets but had offered no explanation for the death of Salah Jmor, 49, a Swiss citizen of Iraqi-Kurdish origin.
According to his family, he was killed by a shot from a three-vehicle American convoy as he was being driven along a highway by his brother.
Jmor had lived since 1980 near Geneva with his wife and three children.
He was a member of Geneva's Socialist party, an informal representative of the Kurds at the United Nations, and helped alert the world to Saddam Hussein's gassing of Kurdish areas in 1988.
Jmor, who traveled regularly to Iraq after the US-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003, was shot on June 28, the day after arriving in Iraq for a visit.
His family said he was tipped for a post in a future autonomous government in Iraq's Kurdish region.
07/05/2005 15:20 GMT