Officials believe kidnapped American journalist still alive

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraq's interior minister told ABC News he believes American journalist Jill Carroll is alive and will be released, even though the Sunday deadline set by her kidnappers had passed.\nInterior Minister Bayan Jabr also said he knew who abducted the 28-year-old journalist last month.\n"We know his name and address, and we are following up on him as well as the Americans," he said. "I think she is still alive."\nU.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told Fox News Channel's "Fox and Friends" Monday that he spoke with Jabr about Carroll's plight.\n"We are doing all that we can to help bring about a release and will persist with that," Khalilzad said.\nCarroll, a freelancer working for the Christian Science Monitor, was abducted Jan. 7 in Baghdad and was last seen on a videotape broadcast Feb. 10 by a Kuwaiti television station, Al-Rai. The station said the kidnappers threatened to kill her unless the United States met unspecified demands by Sunday.\nMeanwhile, Sunni Arabs are ready to end their boycott of talks to form a new Iraqi government if rival Shiites return mosques seized in last week's sectarian attacks and meet other unspecified demands, a top Sunni figure said Monday.\nIn Germany, the government denied a New York Times report that its intelligence service had passed information about Saddam Hussein's plans for defending Baghdad to the United States a month before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.\nThe Times said a German intelligence officer supplied the information to the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency in February 2003.\n"This account is wrong," German government spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm said. "The Federal Intelligence Service and, therefore, also the government, had until now no knowledge of such a plan."\nIn continuing violence, four mortar rounds exploded Monday in a Shiite neighborhood, killing four and wounding 16, police Maj. Moussa Abdul Karim said. U.S. helicopters fired on three houses 15 miles west of Samarra and arrested 10 people, Iraqi police said.\nIt was unclear whether the raid was linked to Wednesday's bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra, which triggered the wave of reprisal attacks that shook the nation last week.\nThe Sunnis boycotted the talks Thursday after the Askariya shrine bombing sparked attacks against Sunni mosques in Baghdad, Basra and elsewhere. The walkout and Sunni-Shiite clashes threatened U.S. plans to establish a unity government capable of luring Sunnis away from the insurgency and raised doubts about U.S. plans to begin withdrawing some of its 138,000 soldiers this year.\nAdnan al-Dulaimi, whose Iraqi Accordance Front spearheaded the Sunni boycott, said the Sunnis have not decided to return to the talks but are "intent on participating" in a new government.\n"The situation is tense and within the next two days, we expect the situation to improve and then we will have talks," he told The Associated Press. "We haven't ended our suspension completely, but we are on the way to end it"