Abducted Irish journalist Rory Carroll should be freed immediately, the Labour Party's foreign affairs spokesman Michael D Higgins said yesterday.
The Guardian reporter "has a distinguished journalistic career. He has reported conflict zones in several continents and is recognised as a journalist of integrity", he added.
Mr Higgins urged the Government to alert all formal and informal networks not only through the formal Iraqi administration, but also through the non-governmental organisations that remain functional in Baghdad.
"It should be made immediately clear that Mr Carroll is a professional carrying out his task of reporting objectively on the Middle East, something he has done with fairness and distinction to date."
Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern yesterday spoke to the foreign editor of the Guardian; Carroll's father, former Irish Times journalist Joe Carroll; and with the Irish Ambassador in Tehran.
Government officials have also been in contact with individuals from various organisations working in Baghdad, including the British Foreign Office, as they seek to gather as many details as possible about what has taken place.
Northern Secretary Peter Hain said the British government would assist in any way it could, if asked, to help free the Dublin-born journalist. "We will do whatever the Irish Government asks us to do, because of course he is an Irish citizen," Mr Hain said.
"He may have been working for a British paper but he's an Irish citizen. We will give what help we can but only whatever Dublin wants us to do." He said it was a very serious case and stressed that the journalist should be considered an Irish national.
"He is an Irish citizen and although we are on the ground and may be able to help, it is very important that people out in Iraq, and maybe including those people responsible for this terrible abduction, understand that he is an Irish citizen, albeit working for a British newspaper," he told RTÉ Radio.
The Irish Anti-War Movement said (IAWM) last night that it planned to make contact with what it called "anti-occupation groups in Baghdad" in an effort to secure Carroll's release.
"The IAWM is calling on the kidnappers of Rory Carroll to release him because he is entirely innocent of any crime against the Iraqi people," the organisation's chairman, Richard Boyd Barrett, said.
The IAWM said Rory Carroll had attempted to provide balanced coverage of the Iraqi conflict.