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France Races Against Clock in Iraq Hostage Crisis

France scrambled to secure the release of two French journalists kidnapped by Iraqi militants who gave Paris until Monday evening to drop its controversial ban on Muslim headscarves in schools.

French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier, in Egypt as part of a French mission to rally support in Iraq and the region, made an impassioned plea to the Islamic Army in Iraq to free Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot.

The militant group, which last week said it killed Italian journalist Enzo Baldoni, Saturday gave the French government 48 hours to rescind the headscarf ban, without saying what would happen to the two Frenchmen if it did not comply.

Anniversary of France's liberation heightens emotions

PARIS – Free at least, the Champs-Elysees was awash with wild joy on Aug. 25, 1944. But deep in the heart of France the war raged on, with Frenchmen killing Frenchmen to aid a desperate Germany.

And now, 60 years later, the people who suffered most are among the staunchest supporters of a new Europe in which France and Germany are, essentially, just two members of a 25-nation super-state.

“This is the great triumph of the 21st century,” said Jean-Marie Delabre, 81. “Peace is accepting the idea that you must live with others and forge natural differences into something stronger.”

He added: “I don’t think I’d have said that a few years after the war.”

France seeks release of journalists

An anxious France has scrambled to obtain the release of two French journalists taken hostage in Iraq by Islamic militants demanding the rescinding of a ban on the Islamic headscarf in French schools.

The kidnappers from the Islamic Army in Iraq, the same group which killed Italian journalist Enzo Baldoni after taking him hostage, gave Paris a 48-hour ultimatum to meet its demands, Qatar-based Arabic-language Al-Jazeera television said citing “our own sources in Iraq.”

The channel identified the kidnapped Frenchmen as missing journalists Christian Chesnot of Radio France Internationale and Georges Malbrunot of Paris daily Le Figaro and said it had received video footage of the two newsmen.

Two French journalists kidnapped in Iraq

The journalists, Christian Chesnot with Radio France International and Georges Malbrunot with the newspaper Le Figaro, were reported missing the morning of August 21. It was not know where they were being held.

According to Al-Jazeera, the kidnappers are demanding that the French government overturn a recently passed law that bans Muslim students from wearing headscarves in French public schools.

The ban was passed by the French parliament in the spring and is expected to go into effect in September. French lawmakers judged wearing religious attire to public school to be a violation of the constitutional separation of church and state.

France, a county of 60 million, has a Muslim population of 5 million.