Rumors They'll be Freed Soon

The press are widely reporting progress in the negotiations to secure the release of kidnapped French reporters Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot. Al-Jazeera says:

Two French journalists who had been taken hostage in Iraq are no longer in the hands of their abductors, French Culture and Communications Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres has said.

"We know that they are alive and no longer in the hands of the abductors who had held them," he told journalists on Thursday in Perpignan, southern France.

The editor of the French publication Le Figaro told Aljazeera that the hostages had been handed over to another group which supported their release.

They're not out of the woods yet so I'd prefer to refrain from speculation for the moment but should they be the only two to survive abduction and threatened execution at the hands of radical Sunni groups in Iraq then this will be a grand revelation about France's presence in the Middle East and its relation to transnational terrorism.