Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini on Monday began a two-day tour of Persian Gulf states aimed at building up support for efforts to secure the release of two Italian women aid workers kidnapped last week along with two Iraqis.  

Italian media said that Frattini will visit Kuwait, Abu Dhabi and Qatar to receive high-profile backing from officials there, just a few days after his deputy Margherita Boniver enlisted the support of Arab women in Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and Yemen.     

According to newspaper reports, the foreign minister will also issue fresh appeals on two important Arab-language TV stations, Al-Arabiya and Al Jazeera, which is based in Qatar.

Frattini will meet Kuwaiti religious leaders, asking them to do all they can to save the lives of people who were working to improve the lives of ordinary Iraqis, the ministry said.

Thanking all the Arab states who have already voiced support for Italy, Frattini said his trip would probably produce "useful information and concrete help, also thanks to the image of an Italy that is a friend of the Arab world."

Frattini's trip comes a day after a group claiming to be holding Torretta and Pari issued an ultimatum demanding that Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi's government order the withdrawal of all Italian forces deployed in Iraq.

The group, which said it was the "Islamic Jihad", warned that if their demands were not met then "we will execute the sentence of God which will be to slit the throats of the two Italian hostages, if God wills it."

The group also said that the kidnapping of the two Italian aid workers was the direct result of the actions of the Italian contingent in Iraq and that no alternative was acceptable to the withdrawal of these troops.

Pari, Torretta and two Iraqi aid workers, a man and a woman, were kidnapped by armed gunmen in Baghdad on Tuesday afternoon.

(Xinhua News Agency September 14, 2004)