The French government is pleading for terrorists to release a Frenchman kidnapped in Iraq.

France on Thursday urged a militant group holding a French engineer hostage in Iraq to release him and reminded the kidnappers that it had no military presence in the Arab country.

"Nothing justifies Bernard Planche being held in captivity," Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said in a statement. "I again call on the kidnappers to release our fellow countryman immediately."

"France has no military presence in Iraq and has always pleaded for this country's full sovereignty to be restored," he added.

I suppose the implication in that statement is that terrorists are justified in kidnapping citizens from those nations that do have a military presence in Iraq.

And is there any evidence that such pleadings to terrorists have ever had the desired impact of influencing them to release their hostages? If they were susceptible to logic or appeals to their humanity would they have been in the business of kidnapping people to begin with?