ISTANBUL, Feb 17: A Turkish businessman who was kidnapped in Iraq in December and released this week, has admitted that he paid a ransom of 500,000 dollars to his abductors.

The kidnappers "told me they wanted a sum that would be useful to them but wouldn't break me. I paid 500,000 dollars," Kahraman Sadikoglu told reporters in Istanbul on Wednesday.

The ransom was paid to one of the kidnappers in Jordan, he said, adding that he had been well treated while in captivity. According to Mr Sadikoglu, who was set free on Monday, his kidnappers had been officials in Saddam Hussein's government.

The Turkish ship owner and three of his companions were kidnapped in mid-December in southern Iraq near Umm Qasr, a port city on the border with Kuwait. Mr Sadikoglu's companions - two Turks and one Iraqi - were freed last month.

Mr Sadikoglu owns a freight company based in Istanbul that does business in the Iraqi cities of Basra and Umm Qasr. The company won contracts to salvage ships that sank in the Gulf in the war between Iraq and Iran during the 1980s. Some 80 Turks, most of them truck drivers, have been killed in Iraq in recent months. -AFP