08 August 2004	Sunday	21 Jamadi-us-Saani 1425

ANKARA, Aug 7: A Turkish company employing a truck driver taken hostage in Iraq said on Saturday it was suspending all work in the country in response to his captors' demands.

Earlier, a group fighting US occupying forces released a video of the driver and threatened to behead him in 48 hours unless his company quit Iraq.

"Owing to the developments we have stopped all trips (to Iraq). All our drivers going into northern Iraq are heading back home," Omer Tarhan, manager of the Atahan transportation company, said.

He said his company normally operates only in comparatively safe northern Iraq but this time the driver, whom he named as Tahsin Top, had gone further south and been abducted somewhere between Mosul and Tikrit.

In the video clip, aired widely on Turkish television, Top urged his compatriots to stop serving US occupying forces in Iraq.

"They should not come for America. They (the Americans) kill, they ambush. They do all kinds of dirty things. Please, my driver friends, do not come here. Do not come for America. America is our enemy, Iraq is our brother," Top said.

A number of Turkish hauliers have suspended operations in Iraq in recent days following a spate of abductions of drivers by militants. On Friday, the foreign ministry said it believed three Turkish drivers taken hostage had been killed in Iraq.-Reuters