LONDON (AFP) - A former Archbishop of Canterbury appealed Friday for the release of five British hostages held for nearly a year in Iraq, calling their kidnappers "good people."

Lord George Carey of Clifton, who stepped down in 2002, recorded a video message to the kidnappers, urging them to release the men who were captured by gunmen at the Iraqi finance ministry on May 29 last year.

In the video, issued through The Times newspaper, Lord Carey said: "You believe, as I do, that faith is important in this broken world.

"I appeal to you, as good people, to release these men who long to be back home once more."

The hostages include an IT specialist working for a US management consultancy company, who has been identified as Peter Moore, and four security guards whose names have not been revealed.

It is known that the guards were employed by Canadian security firm GardaWorld to guard Moore.

Carey was accompanied in the video by Canon Andrew White, his former Middle East envoy, who is now Anglican chaplain to Iraq.

White said he had been assured that the men were alive.

"We are working hard to make serious contacts," he said. "There are positive developments and we really hope we can get our people back. We are told that they are all OK, that they are good.

"It is really difficult, really painful for their families. It is a year now and they wonder when are they going to get their people back -- husbands, boyfriends and fathers.

"What we are doing is separate from everything the Foreign Office, the government of Iraq and the embassy is trying to do. We are working as religious leaders."

A Foreign Office spokesman said: "We are doing everything that we can to try and secure the safe return of the hostages."

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