Palestinian PM urges effort to free BBC journalist

GAZA (Reuters) - Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said on Thursday security services had been told "to do all they can" to secure the release of an abducted BBC reporter.

Alan Johnston, the British Broadcasting Corporation's correspondent in Gaza for the past three years, was seized on Monday while driving his car in the coastal strip.

Haniyeh told a news conference in Gaza where he presented a list of ministers for a new unity cabinet that he and President Mahmoud Abbas had "given instructions to all security services to do all they can to free the kidnapped journalist."

Haniyeh, a leader of the Islamist Hamas movement, condemned abductions of foreigners and reiterated that Hamas security men had been searching for Johnston.

A BBC statement read out in Gaza said the organization "continues to be concerned about the welfare of Alan Johnston" and urged continued efforts to secure his release.

"We've had no firm information about Alan's whereabouts since he left our office here in Gaza on Monday afternoon," the BBC's bureau chief in Jerusalem, Simon Wilson, said.

"We would urge everybody with influence here to continue their efforts so that Alan may be reunited with his family and colleagues at the earliest opportunity," Wilson added. He also thanked Abbas and Haniyeh for their assistance.

Hamas government spokesman Ghazi Hamad said on Tuesday that the authorities "had information regarding the parties behind this kidnapping" but not of Johnston's whereabouts.

There has been a series of abductions of foreign journalists and aid workers in Gaza in the past year. Overall security has deteriorated, largely due to Palestinian factional fighting.

Most of those kidnapped have been freed in a short time, all of them unharmed.