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Missing Girl's Parents Urge Spain's Help

Posted on: Friday, 1 June 2007, 18:00 CDT

By DANIEL WOOLLS

MADRID, Spain - The parents of a British girl who disappeared in Portugal met with Spain's interior minister Friday, saying it was possible she was taken across the border.

Madeleine McCann, 4, disappeared on May 3 when her parents left her and her 2-year-old twin siblings in their hotel room while they dined at a restaurant in their hotel complex in Praia da Luz, a resort town in Portugal's Algarve region.

Parents Kate and Gerry McCann have launched an international campaign to find the girl with the aid of celebrities such as soccer star David Beckham and J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series. The couple had a brief meeting with Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday.

Gerry McCann said they traveled to neighboring Spain in an effort to prompt anyone who might have any information to come forward.

"We are here to ask the Spanish public for help and we really are imploring for that help because we feel it is possible that Madeline was moved from Portugal, possibly into Spain, although we are not certain of that," he said at a news conference.

Saying they do not plan to return to Britain without their daughter, the parents also plan trips to nearby Morocco, and to Germany and the Netherlands, which send many tourists to the resort area of Portugal.

The McCanns, who arrived in Madrid late Thursday, met privately with Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba but declined to speak to reporters afterward. The ministry also would not comment.

Last week, Portuguese police announced they were searching for a white man aged between 35 and 40, who was wearing a dark jacket and light beige trousers and who was possibly carrying a little girl on May 3 in Praia da Luz.

Source: Associated Press/AP Online

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