Baghdad, Iraq ? Videotape broadcast Friday showed a tense and frightened U.S. soldier held captive by masked gunmen who said they wanted to trade him for comrades imprisoned by the U.S.-led occupation. The kidnappers also suggested they were holding other hostages.

Pfc. Keith Maupin, 20, was the first U.S. serviceman and second American confirmed kidnapped in a recent wave of abductions in Iraq. Wearing a floppy desert hat, he sat on the floor and appeared unharmed in the footage aired on the Arab TV station Al-Jazeera.

“My name is Keith Matthew Maupin. I am a soldier from the 1st Division,” he said, looking into the camera. “I am married with a 10-month-old son. I came to liberate Iraq, but I did not come willingly because I wanted to stay with my child.”

During the video, one of the gunmen was heard saying: “We are keeping him to be exchanged for some of the prisoners captured by the occupation forces.”

“Some of our groups managed to capture one of the American soldiers, and he is one of many others. He is being treated according to the treatment of prisoners in the Islamic religion and he is in good health,” the gunman said on the tape, a copy of which was dropped off at the U.S. Embassy in Doha, Qatar.

About two dozen foreigners have been abducted in the past week amid the worst violence Iraq has seen since the U.S.-led invasion on March 20, 2003. U.S. military officials have reported capturing more than 80 insurgents in fighting since April 1.

Maupin, of Batavia, Ohio, and Sgt. Elmer C. Krause, 40, of Greensboro, N.C., were listed as missing after their convoy was attacked April 9 outside Baghdad amid a wave of kidnappings blamed on anti-U.S. insurgents.

Seven private U.S. contractors also disappeared after the convoy attack, including Thomas Hamill, a 43-year-old truck driver from Mississippi, the only other American known to have been captured. American experts were working to determine whether four bodies discovered west of Baghdad were the remains of some of the missing.

Most of the recent kidnappings appear to have been carried out by Sunni militant groups, though a few foreigners have been taken by Shiites in the south. U.S. officials are struggling to determine whether there is a central hand behind the various hostage-takers.

Kidnapped American soldier Keith Matthew Maupin, 20, of Batavia, Ohio, is surrounded by his captors in this undated image made from video broadcast Friday by Arab television station Al-Jazeera. Maupin was listed as missing on April 9, when his convoy was attacked outside Baghdad, Iraq.

Progress amid violence

In the latest bloodshed, U.S. troops skirmished with Shiite militiamen near the southern city of Kufa; five Iraqis died. In the north, mortars fired by insurgents killed eight Iraqi civilians in Mosul.

Elsewhere, there were signs of progress in ending the violence in the besieged city of Fallujah with the first direct negotiations between U.S. officials and city leaders.

The military agreed to reposition troops to give residents better access to the city’s hospital, but U.S. negotiators were pressing the Fallujah leaders to get insurgents to abide by a cease-fire.

The top civilian negotiator warned that time was running short for talks. “I must be candid … time is limited,” said Richard H. Jones, deputy director of the U.S. coalition authority. “We cannot just sit and allow the situation to continue the way it is.”

Cleric vows defiance

Meanwhile, Iraq’s top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, warned the U.S. military against entering the holy city of Najaf to capture a radical cleric wanted for murder.

U.S. Maj. Gen. John Sattler said the 2,500 U.S. troops deployed on the edge of the southern city would not move in for now. Negotiations are under way to find a compromise to avert an attack on Najaf.

The wanted cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, took a defiant tone, preaching while wearing a shroud symbolizing his willingness to die and warning that negotiations were near collapse.

“I am ready to meet martyrdom for the sake of Iraq,” al-Sadr said Friday.