Roberta Lopes
Reporter Agência Brasil

Brasília - It has now been exactly a year since a Brazilian engineer, João José Vasconcellos Júnior, was kidnapped in Iraq where he was working for a Brazilian construction firm, Odebrechet. A convoy that Vasconcellos Junior was travelling in near the city of Baiji, in the So-called Sunni triangle, was attacked by terrorists and he was taken hostage on January 19, 2005.

The Foreign Ministry says that ever since the confirmation of the abduction of the Brazilian everyone in the government, from president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva down, has done all that was possible to free him. However, the ministry addes, the area where the kidnapping took place is very dangerous and the site of frequent skirmishes, attacks and bombings which makes it extremely difficult to get reliable information.

Brazil has set up an "Iraq Center" at its diplomatic representation in Jordan and used that as a base for investigating the case.

Translation: Allen Bennett