“If anyone is ready to celebrate the eventual reelection of Bush, it’s al-Qaida — whereas it is clear that the Palestinians hope that a Kerry victory will unblock the situation,” he said.

The Foreign Office, which warned before the war that Iraq could become a breeding ground for al-Qaida, did not deny yesterday that Sir Ivor made the remarks. “We are not making any comment other than the fact they do not represent government policy,” a spokesman said.

In a statement Monday night, Sir Ivor said: “These statements as reported do not reflect my personal views.” The Foreign Office is taking a soft line because Sir Ivor had not intended his comments to be made public and there was a breach of Chatham House rules, meaning the conference had been held on condition that all comments would be kept off the record.

The Foreign Office minister for Europe, Denis MacShane, and European Union commissioners Neil Kinnock and Chris Patten were among those at the conference. MacShane, who left before the remarks were made, yesterday praised Sir Ivor as “an effective advocate of good relations between Britain and Italy.”

The report of the conference came from Corriere della Sera’s Monica Guerzoni, who covered the meeting from outside. A delegate who attended the meeting said that the ambassador’s comments had come in response to a question using the same expression, “the best recruiting sergeant for al-Qaida,” from a British delegate.

Sir Ivor, born in 1946 in Liverpool, has been ambassador in Rome for just over a year. He represented Britain in Yugoslavia in the 1990s and was criticized by the U.S. then for being overfriendly with Slobodan Milosevic.

Bunel said he was speaking for about 50 international agencies operating in Iraq. He said he had no idea who had abducted the Italian women, Simona Torretta and Simona Pari, who work for Bridge to Baghdad, an organization helping children across the country.

However, an Iraqi militant group called Ansar al-Zawahri said it had kidnapped the women. In a message posted on an Islamist Web site, the group claimed that “this is the first of our attacks against Italy.” The name Partisans of Zawahri appears to refer to Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man, Ayman al-Zawahri. But there were doubts last night about the authenticity of the statement, which made no demands.

Virtually all major aid organizations have already left Iraq because of the deteriorating security situation, including the United Nations, the International Red Cross and Médecins sans Frontières.

Those that have stayed have had to reassess the situation because of the nature of this week’s kidnapping, which involved 20 gunmen bursting into the organization’s office on Tuesday afternoon in central Baghdad. It marked a change in strategy by hostage takers, who had not previously targeted aid workers or women, except for one Japanese woman. Most hostages have been captured on roads and in conflict zones outside the capital.

In Italy yesterday, friends and colleagues of the women expressed shock, and the prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, called on left-wing opposition leaders to stand with the right in the face of the crisis. Berlusconi was said to be “aghast and flabbergasted” that women were being harmed because “Islam teaches that they are sacred.”

In a statement, opposition leaders repeated their opposition to the war in Iraq and Italy’s military presence there, but said the priority was to save the hostages.

The deputy prime minister, Gianfranco Fini, said the kidnapping showed that “terrorists had made a quantum leap in their strategy.” Roberto Calderoli, a cabinet minister in Berlusconi’s center-right government, described the attack as “a declaration of war against the West” because Iraqi rebels made no distinction between military and civilian foreigners in their country.

The Italian media broadcast footage of the women playing with children in Iraq and talking of their passion for their work. The newspaper Corriere della Sera said the kidnappers probably “knew perfectly well” what the women did and kidnapped them “to show they don’t distinguish” between aid workers and soldiers.

Pope John Paul joined in a prayer for their release with pilgrims at his general audience, and a Vatican newspaper headline said: “Women of peace are hostages of war.” Leaders of the Muslim community in Italy addressed the nation through Vatican radio, condemning the attack, calling for the women to be released and repeating that their capture goes against Islamic teaching.

This kidnapping comes 10 days after the murder of Italian journalist Enzo Baldoni, who was kidnapped while traveling to Najaf with the Italian Red Cross. Italy rejected the demand from his kidnappers, calling themselves the Islamic army of Iraq, that it pull its troops out of Iraq. Berlusconi’s government has been heavily criticized over his negotiations to free Baldoni.

Wednesday night a Web site published a photograph that it said showed the missing journalist’s body. The picture showed a bearded figure resembling Baldoni, bloodied or dirtied and lying on the ground. There was no immediate independent verification of the picture.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld expressed sympathy for the 1,000 U.S. dead and said he was confident the interim Iraqi government would find a way to retake cities now in the hands of insurgents.

However, in the latest of a spate of kidnappings, about 20 men with Kalashnikovs and pistols with silencers drove up to a private house belonging to the humanitarian organization Bridge to Baghdad in a busy commercial area of the Iraqi capital and rushed inside in broad daylight Tuesday.

They left with two Italian staff, Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, both 29, and two Iraqis, a woman who worked for an Italian organization, Intersos, and a male employee of Bridge to Baghdad.

A spokesman for Bridge to Baghdad, Lello Rienzi, told reporters in Rome that the men were from an unidentified Islamic group. “We had no sign of danger,” he said, adding that the women “believed they were working in complete security.”

Witnesses described the kidnapping as “extremely professional” and said a well-dressed man wearing a suit and tie had led the operation. “Four cars pulled up outside our house. About 20 guys suddenly burst inside. They made us sit on the ground and started beating us,” one eyewitness, Haider Muhammad Ali, 26, said. “They kidnapped the Italian women and an Iraqi girl. The women didn’t scream. They just went quietly with the kidnappers. We were completely terrified. We were 100 percent convinced we would all die.”

Around 15 people were inside the house at the time. The kidnappers took five hostages — but one man, an Iraqi, escaped in the confusion. None of the guards at the house had weapons, Ali said. “We are a humanitarian organization and we don’t believe in them.”

The chief of the Italian intelligence service, SISMI, Nicolo Pollari, recently warned that hostage takers might target women for extra emotional impact.

Numerous Iraqis and Westerners have been abducted by political groups, and criminal gangs demanding ransom, but there is growing concern among some that gangs seeking large amounts of ransom are now targeting non-Iraqis. Last week, Kuwait and Gulf Link Transport Co. said it paid $500,000 in ransom for seven of its employees. The latest abductions are likely to fuel uncertainty over the fate of two French journalists whose kidnappers have reportedly demanded $5 million for their release.

It was not clear last night whether the motivation behind yesterday’s kidnapping was political or financial. Italy has about 2,700 troops in Iraq, the third largest number after the U.S. and Britain, and its pro-American government has refused to cave in to militant demands that they leave.

Torretta, the head of the organization’s Iraq operation, has been in the country since before the war started. Pari arrived in Iraq in June 2003, and was working on a school project in the capital.