Americans’ Claim Rejected By Iraq

Iraq’s foreign minister said Thursday that two Americans imprisoned for illegally entering Iraq could appeal their sentences.

But the minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, said authorities in Baghdad rejected the claim that they unwittingly strayed across the Kuwait border into Iraq.

David Daliberti, 41, and William Barloon, 39, said they were going to visit friends at a U.N. post near the Kuwaiti border when they inadvertently crossed into Iraq on March 13. They were sentenced Saturday to eight years in prison.

Interviewed on Radio Monte Carlo, a station in Paris that broadcasts to the Middle East, Sahhaf said that in the past many people strayed across the desert border.