Aug. 31 (Bloomberg) -- French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, given until tonight by kidnappers of two French reporters to revoke a law banning the Muslim headscarf in state schools, held an emergency cabinet meeting to discuss the crisis.
A group calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq seized Christian Chesnot, 37, and Georges Malbrunot, 41, on Aug. 20. It released a videotape Saturday giving France 48 hours to scrap the law that forbids ``ostentatious'' signs of religious faith, including scarves, in French state schools.
A second videotape, broadcast by Al-Jazeera television yesterday, extended the deadline to 9 p.m. Paris time tonight.
The French government, which opposed last year's U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, insists the law will be enforced when the new school year starts Thursday. In the latest tape, Chesnot said he and Malbrunot may suffer the same fate as Enzo Baldoni, an Italian journalist killed by the group last week.
Failure to scrap the law ``might cost us our lives,'' Chesnot said. ``It's a question of time, maybe minutes, before we are among the dead.''
Raffarin summoned Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie, Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin, Education Minister Francois Fillon and Culture and Communications Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres to discuss the issue this morning. The ministers declined comment as they left Raffarin's office after the meeting.
President Jacques Chirac is due back in Paris later today after talks at the Black Sea resort of Sochi with Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. Chirac arrived there early today. He postponed his scheduled departure yesterday because of the hostages.
Opposition to War
France, Germany and Russia led opposition to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq at the United Nations last year.
``France as a democracy has laws, values and traditions,'' Chirac said at a press conference in Sochi. ``Under the given circumstances we are concentrating all our efforts on freeing the hostages and we appeal for their immediate release.''
French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier is in Jordan on the second leg of a Middle East tour to seek support in the Muslim world to obtain the hostages' release.
Several thousand people gathered in front of the human rights commemoration stone at Paris's Trocadero for a demonstration calling for the hostages' release last night.
The kidnappers are a ``bunch of disgusting cowards who are just trying to create chaos over here,'' said Yazid Sabeg, an Algerian-born French Muslim and chairman of computer-services business CS Communication & Systemes SA.
Chesnot, an Arabic speaker, is a reporter for Radio France Internationale. Malbrunot works for the daily Le Figaro and RTL radio.
To contact the reporter on this story:
Simon Packard in Paris packard@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Chris Collins at collinsc@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: August 31, 2004 06:35 EDT