(This is an image taken from an Arab Satellite TV channel of two of four peace activists taken hostage in Iraq and broadcast Tuesday Nov. 29, 2005. Photo: AP)

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Four Western hostages labeled "spies of the occupation" were shown in a video aired on Tuesday as a spate of abductions took Iraq back to the dire security conditions foreigners faced from hostage-takers last year.

The four aid workers -- two Canadians, a Briton and an American -- were shown in the tape broadcast by Al Jazeera television three days after they were snatched in west Baghdad.

The grainy video from a previously unknown group calling itself the "Swords of Truth" brigades showed four men sitting cross-legged on the ground. It appeared to carry Sunday's date stamp and had crossed swords in the top right-hand corner.

The organization accused the men of being "spies working for the occupying forces" under the guise of working for a Christian group. Al Jazeera did not say if the tape included a threat against the men's lives.

The four men work for Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), one of the few remaining aid groups operating in Iraq.

The video showed the passport of 74-year-old Briton Norman Kember, a retired professor and life-long peace activist who has been identified by the British Foreign Office.

The group said the names of the other hostages were withheld for their security.

"Our members accompany family members looking for missing relatives to talk to American military forces and Iraqi government officials," CPT spokeswoman Jessica Phillips said in Chicago.

The tape of the hostages emerged on the same day that another group issued video of it holding a German archaeologist and her driver hostage. They disappeared in Baghdad on Friday.

HOSTAGE CRISIS

Despite the surge in kidnappings of foreigners and Iraqis and political and sectarian violence ahead of parliamentary elections on December 15, U.S. troops may soon start to withdraw as overall security improves.

Iraq's national security adviser said up to 30,000 of the 155,000 U.S. troops in Iraq could leave in early 2006.

Mowaffaq al-Rubaie said local security forces were performing better than before and a recent fall in guerrilla attacks marked "the beginning of the end of the insurgency."

His remarks concurred with comments from White House spokesman Scott McClellan, who said Iraqi forces should be sufficiently trained to permit a reduction in American troops next year.

McClellan said U.S. President George W. Bush would focus in a speech on Wednesday on efforts to train Iraqi security forces to take over from U.S. forces.

In another videotape broadcast on Tuesday, unidentified kidnappers threatened to kill German archaeologist Susanne Osthoff and her driver unless Berlin stopped cooperating with Iraq's U.S.-backed government, Germany's ARD TV reported.

More than 200 foreigners have been seized since the U.S-led invasion in 2003 and around 50 have been executed since 2004.

In the latest spate, six Iranians -- four men and two women -- and an Iraqi woman were abducted on their return from a Shi'ite holy site in the city of Balad on Monday.

The women were released soon after and Iranian television said late on Tuesday that the four men had also been freed.

CLERIC KILLED

Police said two prominent Iraqis had also been kidnapped. Saad Albana, a senior official in the Housing and Reconstruction Ministry, was abducted from his Baghdad home on Monday.

Gunmen also abducted Thafer Migwil Hazza, a relative of deposed leader Saddam Hussein and a former Iraqi army officer, from his house in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, police said.

Political slayings are also on the rise ahead of the poll.

Bashar Shnawa Gaber, a senior member of the Shi'ite Dawa party, was shot dead in Baghdad on Monday. Jaafari's Dawa party forms part of the ruling United Iraqi Alliance.

Sunni Arab politicians Iyad Alizi and Ali Hussein and a bodyguard were shot dead as they drove in Baghdad on Monday.

On Tuesday, two members of the Christian Assyrian Democratic Movement were shot and killed by gunmen as they put up election campaign posters in the northeastern city of Mosul.

In Falluja, a Sunni stronghold west of Baghdad, witnesses said gunmen in several cars shot dead an influential Sunni Muslim scholar outside his mosque.

And two U.S. soldiers were killed when their patrol hit a roadside bomb north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said, taking the toll of American troops killed in Iraq to 2,110.

(Source: Reuters)