Search grows for kidnapped Europeans in Ethiopia

ADDIS ABABA, March 5 (Reuters) Ethiopian security forces scoured a remote northeastern region today in search of a group of kidnapped Europeans, including British embassy officials.

Several British newspapers, quoting defence sources, said London had sent a Special Air Service (SAS) team to Ethiopia to help find the group which disappeared last week while visiting Afar, considered one of the world's most hostile terrains.

The foreigners were seized near the border with Eritrea, along with 13 Ethiopians working as drivers and translators. Five Ethiopians were later found close to the frontier.

Asmara has denied allegations by an Ethiopian official that forces from Arat military training camp in Eritrea had kidnapped the Britons.

Yesterday, Ethiopia, which suffers strained relations with its tiny neighbour following a 1998-2000 border war, said the identity of the kidnappers had yet to be established.

Fears for the missing travellers grew in Ethiopia's small British expatriate community as another day passed with no word on the group's whereabouts.

Britain's Daily Mirror newspaper said 60 troops from Britain's SAS Standby Squadron -- a rapid response team -- had arrived in Djibouti, home to a US-led counter-terrorism operation.

A small delegation of British embassy staff has already flown to the northern city of Mekele, which has the closest airport to the area where the Westerners went missing.

In London, a Foreign Office spokeswoman declined comment on whether Britain had sent hostage negotiators to the Horn of Africa country.

But she said the Foreign Office was in ''constant touch with all levels of the Ethiopian government and that includes the prime minister''.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi is a close ally of British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

An official at St Matthew's Church said the only Anglican church in Addis Ababa had started opening its doors at 1030 hrs for any worshipper or wellwisher who wanted to pray for the missing.

''If they can't come, we're asking people just to pause for a few moments ... to remember them,'' said associate chaplain Rev.

Michael Starr.

The church was built on land donated by Ethiopia's last emperor, Haile Selassie, in 1955 to serve the country's expatriate British and Anglican community.

One British man who asked not to be named said: ''You hear of kidnappings on the news and they sound terrible. But it is unbearable when you know the people involved and can imagine what they might be going through.'' Afar is one of Ethiopia's poorest but most visually spectacular regions, populated mostly by roaming herders who scrape a living from their sheep and goats.

The area, a barren expanse of ancient salt mines and volcanoes, was the scene of a low-level rebellion against the government in the 1990s by separatists calling for an Afar state on territory straddling Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti.

REUTERS PDM PM1804