BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Negotiations to free a CBS News journalist seized in the southern Iraqi city of Basra a week ago are being held up over discussions about how he should be released, a leading Shi'ite militia group said on Sunday.
The British journalist, who has not been named, and hisinterpreter were seized from a hotel in the centre of Basralast week. The interpreter was freed on Wednesday andnegotiators had been confident the journalist would also bequickly released.
Asked what the stumbling block was, Hareth al-Athari, aspokesman for Shi'ite cleric and militia leader Moqtadaal-Sadr, told Reuters: "Finding the right place and the righttime."
Athari, the head of the cleric's Basra office which hasbeen involved in the negotiations, said the kidnappers werewary of being caught by police when handing over the reporter.
He added the kidnappers' identities were still not known.
Basra has been at the centre of tensions between Sadr'spowerful Mehdi Army militia and supporters of a Shi'ite rival,the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, as both seek to gain controlof the mainly Shi'ite south and its oil wealth.
The city, Iraq's second largest, was put under Britishcontrol after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion until securityresponsibility was handed over to Iraqi authorities inDecember.
Last August, Sadr, who led two uprisings against U.S.forces in 2004, ordered his followers to observe a six-monthceasefire. However the U.S. military says rogue elements, whichit accuses Iran of supporting, have ignored the freeze.
The journalist for the U.S. network CBS is the latestmember of the media to have been caught up in the violence thathas engulfed Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion.
In August 2005, Steve Vincent, a freelance U.S. journalistwas found shot dead in Basra four days after he wrote anopinion piece in The New York Times criticising the spread ofShi'ite Islamist fundamentalism in the city.
The Committee to Protect Journalists has called the Iraqwar "the deadliest conflict for journalists in recent history,"with 126 journalists and 50 support workers killed since 2003.
(Reporting by Michael Holden and Mohammed Abbas, editing byMary Gabriel)
