MANILA, 4 November 2004 — Philippine Foreign Secretary Alberto Romulo yesterday said the government is seeking help from Muslim countries in a bid to secure the release of two Filipinos being held hostage by militants in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“We have to work with our friends, and I think that is the best way of effecting a release and I’m talking of friends in the Muslim world, I’m talking of friends in the United Nations and I’m talking of friends in the world,” Romulo said as the government’s woes doubled with the kidnapping of a Filipino in Iraq.

Roberto Tarongoy, a 31-year-old accountant, was among six people seized by gunmen from a compound of a Saudi company in Baghdad on Monday.

The militants immediately later released two Iraqi guards but are holding on to Tarongoy and his American, Nepalese and Iraqi colleagues.

Labor Secretary Patricia Santo Tomas said Tarongoy apparently entered Iraq in July, violating a Philippine government ban on Filipino workers, which was imposed shortly after Iraqi insurgents abducted Filipino truck driver Angelo dela Cruz.

Dela Cruz was freed unharmed after President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo withdrew a small Philippine contingent from Iraq early, as demanded by the insurgents. The pullout won praise at home but drew strong criticism from the United States and other key allies, which warned of a bad precedent of negotiating with terrorists.

A Philippine diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the government was getting signals from US authorities in Iraq that Manila should not seek to independently negotiate for Tarongoy’s release, but should join a collective effort with other countries.

Arroyo’s special envoy, Roy Cimatu, who led efforts to free dela Cruz in July, was heading to Baghdad from Kuwait, the Department of Foreign Affairs said.

A team of diplomats sent by the Philippine government to Kabul to negotiate the freedom of diplomat Angelito Nayan had earlier been stopped by United Nations officials from negotiating on their own with the kidnappers.

Nayan was seized along with two other UN election workers by a Taleban splinter group calling itself the Army of Muslims, which threatened to kill them unless the United Nations and British forces do not start withdrawing by noon yesterday.

The group extended the deadline for “a few days more” to give room for negotiations.

Best Efforts

Secretary Romulo said, however, that the government is not giving up.

“We will do our best,” he said. “We are mobilizing all resources and exerting all possible means to secure the safe release of the hostages.”

Asked if the government would exert the same effort it did in the case of driver dela Cruz, Romulo said: “As long as there are Filipinos (involved in such incidents), we exert all efforts (to secure them). There should be no distinction.”

Romulo said he instructed the Philippine ambassdor to Iraq “to take all appropriate measures to gather additional information on the situation, the abductors and their possible demands.

He said he also instructed Ambassador Bahnarim Guinomla in Riyadh to confer with officials of SATCo, the employer of Tarangoy, and ask their help in securing their employee’s freedom.

Relatives of the two victims have also appealed to the hostage-takers to spare their loved ones.

Nayan’s brother, in an appeal aired on television, said the hostage was in Afghanistan only to help the Afghan people.

In the southern city of Davao, Tarongoy’s wife issued her own appeal yesterday. “He is a very good husband, he is a very good man. Please have mercy on him,”she said.

She said her husband left them in June to look for a job in Manila. She said she was surprised when he called from Baghdad.

Migrante’s Solution

While the nation waited with bated breath for further developments on the two kidnapping cases, the activist group Migrante International demanded the relief of Cimatu as special envoy to the Middle East for supposedly saying that OFWs were safe in the Middle East.

Migrante secretary-general Maita Santiago also blamed President Arroyo “for putting the lives of Overseas Filipino Workers in danger” after she expressed her administration’s support for the US-led war in Iraq.

Malaca?ang Palace said it would handle the crisis with “sensitivity” but was advising those working and living in conflict-affected areas that they should brace for more danger. “We must steel ourselves for dangerous times. Filipinos live and work at the edge of conflict in parts of the world and are exposed to grave risks,” Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye said in a press statement. (Additional input from agencies)