PARIS, Jan 8: French journalists defended their right to report from Iraq on Saturday after President Jacques Chirac urged them to stay away following the disappearance of a journalist working for French newspaper Liberation.

The daily said it had still not heard from Florence Aubenas and her Iraqi interpreter Al Saadi since they left a Baghdad hotel on Wednesday morning. It is not clear whether they have been kidnapped.

"The day there are no journalists in Baghdad, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and al Qaeda representative in Iraq Abu Musab al Zarqawi will be the main sources of information," Serge July, the head of Liberation, wrote in an editorial.

"If the doors remain half open, we owe it to the handful of journalists without whom the country would become a blind area," he said under the headline "An indispensable witness".

July said Liberation always reviewed security when sending journalists to dangerous areas such as Iraq and underlined that Aubenas, 43, has plenty of experience working in danger zones. She has also reported from Rwanda, Algeria and Afghanistan.

Chirac advised journalists at an annual New Year ceremony in Paris on Friday not to go to Iraq. The Foreign Ministry declined comment on Saturday other than saying French authorities were doing all they could to find Aubenas.

A French diplomatic source has said Aubenas could have been killed, injured, kidnapped or arrested. Foreign Minister Michel Barnier said the reason for her disappearance was not clear.

Her case has raised the prospect of France facing a new hostage crisis in Iraq just over two weeks after two of its journalists - Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot - were freed after being held by Iraqi militants for four months.

Their capture by a militant group in Iraq on Aug 20 shocked France.

Chesnot defended the right to report from dangerous areas but said journalists must be careful.

"We must continue to cover events in Iraq, it's clear, but must learn the lessons from the dramatic experience we went through. The longer a journalist stays, the easier he is to find and therefore more vulnerable," Chesnot told Liberation.

Robert Menard, secretary general of Paris-based media rights watchdog Reporters Without Borders, also said journalists were more at risk if they stayed a long time in Iraq but added: "The worst thing would be if there were no more journalists in Iraq."

More than 120 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq since April 2004, of whom more than three dozen have been killed. -Reuters