Two Canadians and a Briton working for a Christian peace group kidnapped in Iraq three months ago issued a new plea for their release, according to a video broadcast on Al-Jazeera.

The video was the first news of the men since late January, but conspicuously did not feature an American fellow peace activist who had been kidnapped with them.

"Three hostages in Iraq pleaded with Arab Gulf leaders to help free them and the hostages who call themselves the Christian Peacemaker Team pleaded with their governments to intervene for their release," said the Al-Jazeera news presenter.

In a short video clip received by the channel, Briton Norman Kember, 74, and Canadians Harmeet Sooden, 32 and James Loney, 41 appear to take turns to speak in the recording digitally stamped February 28, 2006.

The fourth hostage, American Tom Fox, 54, was missing from the footage. The sound on the video was not audible.

The three hostages appeared disheveled and seated on the floor. Kember appeared tired, the bespectacled Sooden looked frail and drawn out and Loney was sporting a beard and lowered his head occasionally as he spoke.

After the latest tape was released, a spokeswoman for the British Foreign Office demanded that the four hostages kidnapped in Baghdad at gunpoint on November 26 be freed immediately.

"To release a video of this kind is obviously extremely distressing for the relatives, and our thoughts are with them as well as with the victims who have been held now for more than 100 days," she said.

On February 21, Canada"s Foreign Minister Peter MacKay said he believed the four hostages were still alive and voiced optimism about the chances of their release.

The men were part of a delegation for Christian Peacemaker Teams, a group that dispatches volunteers to crisis areas in a bid to reduce armed conflict.

Reacting to the latest video, the group blamed the US-led coalition forces for the kidnappings.

"We believe that the root cause of the abduction of our colleagues is the US and British-led invasion and occupation of Iraq," it said in a statement. "Many in Iraq have experienced this long war as terrorism. The occupation must end."

It raised concern about Fox"s absence in the video. "We do not know what to make of Tom Foxs absence from this video," the group said.

The group also supported the release of detainees held in Iraq prisons by the US-led coalition.

"We also hold in our hearts the families of 14,600 Iraqis currently detained illegally by the multi-national forces in Iraq who likewise await the release of their loved ones," it said.

A group calling itself the Brigades of the Swords of Righteousness threatened to kill them unless all Iraqi prisoners were released, according to a video message broadcast on Al-Jazeera in early December.

Another video aired January 28, also on Al-Jazeera, showing all four hostages came with a message from the abductors saying they were giving a "last chance" for their demands to be met or the hostages would be killed.

Meanwhile, the fate of seized US reporter Jill Carroll and two German engineers remains unclear.

US ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, said the freelance newspaper journalist, who worked for the Boston-based Christian Science Monitor, was still alive based on information he had received from Iraq"s interior minister.

Carroll"s kidnappers had threatened to kill her by February 26 unless all female Iraqi prisoners were released, said Kuwait"s Al-Rai television on February 11 quoting sources close to the captors. The same channel had previously shown a video of Carroll.

Dozens of foreigners have been taken hostage in Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003. Some foreigners have been murdered by their kidnappers, often by beheading.