Indianan pleads for life on TV

BAGHDAD, Iraq — An Indiana man, scared and clutching his passport to his chest, was shown at gunpoint on a videotape aired by Al-Jazeera television Wednesday, two days after he was kidnapped from a water treatment plant near Baghdad. The station said he pleaded for his life and urged U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq.

The United States said it would maintain its policy of not negotiating with kidnappers.

In LaPorte, Ind., a yellow ribbon was tied around a tree outside Jeffrey Ake's one-story brick house, and an American flag fluttered on a pole from the home. The U.S. Embassy said the man on the video appeared to be Ake, a contract worker who was kidnapped around noon Monday.

The video came on a day of bloody attacks, as insurgents blew up a fuel tanker in Baghdad, killed 12 policemen in Kirkuk, and drove a car carrying a bomb into a U.S. convoy, killing five Iraqis and wounding four U.S. contract workers on the capital's infamous airport road.

Ake — the 47-year-old president and CEO of Equipment Express, a company that manufacturers bottled water equipment — is the latest of more than 200 foreigners seized in Iraq in the past year.

The Al-Jazeera tape showed a man sitting behind a desk with at least three assailants — two hooded and one off-camera — pointing assault rifles at him. Ake, wearing an open-collar shirt with rolled-up shirt sleeves, was sitting or kneeling behind a wooden desk and holding what appeared to be a photo and a passport.

The station didn't air audio of the video, but said the man asked the U.S. government to begin talks with the Iraqi resistance and save his life. No group claimed responsibility, and there was no way to authenticate the video. Al-Jazeera didn't say how it obtained the tape.

President Bush's press secretary, Scott McClellan, said there would be no negotiating with the kidnappers.

"Any time there is a hostage — an American hostage — it is a high priority for the United States," he said. "Our position is well known when it comes to negotiating. Obviously this is a sensitive matter."

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said U.S. officials were thoroughly engaged with Iraqi officials and others in trying to secure the hostage's release.

"Obviously, the United States continues to hold to a policy that we do not negotiate with terrorists," Rice told reporters after meeting Italian Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini. "It only encourages them."

In Indiana, LaPorte Police Chief David Gariepy met with Ake's family and called it "a terrible situation."