KUWAIT CITY, 6 September 2004 — A leading Kuwaiti transport company, which has multimillion-dollar contracts with US forces, said yesterday a small number of its Turkish drivers have refused to go to Iraq for fear of being taken hostage.

“There has been no mass action,” said James Reheiser, spokesman for Public Warehousing Company (PWC Logistics). “Only a small number of drivers wanted to leave” the company, he said.

Reheiser was responding to local press reports that more than 400 of the 1,500 Turkish truckers employed by several Kuwaiti companies staged a strike Saturday demanding that their contracts be terminated.

“No one is forced to drive into Iraq... It’s not compulsory. But if they were hired to go to Iraq and they don’t want to, they can seek employment somewhere else,” Reheiser said.

Yesterday, two transport companies announced they had stopped doing business in Iraq in an attempt to secure the release of a Turkish driver taken hostage. “As of this morning, I stopped all my trucks from entering Iraq,” Ghassan Jasim Abbel, owner of the Kuwait Falcon Co. , said.

Abbel said he had not yet had any contact, directly or indirectly, with the kidnappers.

Kuwait Falcon contracted with a Turkish transport company, Renay International based in Antakya, southern Turkey, for some hauls in Iraq. Turkey’s Anatolia news agency reported that Renay, also was ending its Iraq work. “Our company is ending activities in Iraq. We hope that our driver is safely returned to our country and to his family,” Anatolia quoted Edip Rende, a partner in Renay as saying.

Anatolia identified the captured Turk as Mithat Civi, a 48-year-old father of three who had been working in Kuwait but left for Iraq a month ago.

A videotape aired Saturday on Al-Arabiya television demanded Kuwait Falcon cease its operations in Iraq within 48 hours or Civi would be beheaded. The tape showed a man it said was the driver sitting in front of a banner with the militant group’s name, the Islamic Resistance Movement —Al-Noaman Brigades.

Four Turkish nationals have been executed by hostage-takers in the war-torn country.