Committee for Defense of Art and Culture in a letter addressed to President Mohammad Khatami on Friday called or attempts to guarantee the release of two Iranian documentarians being held by Americans in Iraq, IRNA reported from Tehran.

The letter a copy of which was cabled to IRNA urged the Iranian overnment to defend at the best the rights of the documentarians and adopt measures to prevent such bitter events to re-occur.

Soheil Karimi and Saeed Aboutaleb, two Iranian documentarians and the staff members of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), were arrested by US forces on July 1 in southern Iraq while working on a documentary about life in Iraq.

Over 100 Iranian cinema artists and directors of documentary films recently in a letter to the United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan urged him to push the occupying forces in Iraq to release the Iranian TV reporters.

This followed a statement by Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi who said measures to secure the release of two Iranian documentary makers, taken captive by the US in Iraq recently, is top on Iran`s agenda.

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