Officials Search for Italian Reporter

ROME -- The Italian newspaper La Repubblica said it has lost contact with its reporter in Afghanistan, and a spokesman for the Taliban claimed Tuesday the group had captured a Briton posing as a journalist who previously worked for that paper.

La Repubblica has had no contact with Daniele Mastrogiacomo since Sunday, the ministry said. The Foreign Ministry and the Italian Embassy in Kabul were trying to find the reporter.

"We have not heard from him since Sunday, he was in Kandahar on assignment," said the paper's editor-in-chief, Ezio Mauro, according to La Repubblica's Web site. Kandahar is the Taliban's former stronghold in the country's volatile south.

In Afghanistan, a Taliban spokesman claimed the hard-line militia had detained a Briton who told them he had previously worked for the paper, as well as two Afghans as they traveled together by vehicle Monday in Nad Ali district of Helmand province.

"Taliban higher authorities" will decide what to do with them, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, who claims to speak for the Taliban, told The Associated Press by satellite phone from an undisclosed location. "We are investigating whether they are British spies."

He identified the Afghans as Sayed Agha and Ajmal. He gave only one name for the second Afghan and did not identify the Briton at all.

In Rome, Deputy Foreign Minister Franco Danieli told the Senate that a statement attributed to the Taliban and released in Kabul claimed the group had captured a journalist from La Repubblica and accused him of being a spy. Complicating matters, Danieli said the Taliban statement "speaks of the capture of an Italian journalist who works for Repubblica."

It was not immediately clear if the man detained was, in fact, Mastrogiacomo.

La Repubblica newspaper said Mastrogiacomo, 52, was born in Karachi, Pakistan, where his father was an engineer for an Italian company. He has dual Italian-Swiss citizenship, but was traveling only with his Italian passport, the paper said.

Mastrogiacomo has worked since 2002 as a staff correspondent in Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, Gaza, Lebanon and Iraq.

Ahmadi said the Briton claimed to have worked for the Italian newspaper La Repubblica in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, but had been living with British forces in Helmand and gathering information for them. The British Foreign Office said later Tuesday it now appeared unlikely that the missing journalist was one of its nationals.

"We've been doing extensive work to see if that is the case but we haven't been able to find any citizens missing in Afghanistan," a spokesman said on condition of anonymity due to government policy.

"We will continue to make inquiries, but we have already made extensive inquiries and we haven't been able to find a British citizen missing along those lines."

Afghan officials had no immediate information on the reported kidnapping.

Most of the NATO-led troops in Helmand province are British, and the alliance on Tuesday launched an offensive against militants in the northern part of Helmand, a Taliban stronghold.

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Associated Press writer Noor Khan in Kandahar, Afghanistan, contributed to this report.