Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet said on Tuesday he had been told that the case of seven kidnapped Estonians was a top priority for Lebanon, and he hoped the cyclists would return home soon.
"They all said very clearly that the case was a top priority for Lebanon," Paet told reporters in Beirut after meeting the Lebanese president and interior minister as well as European Union ambassadors.
The seven Estonians were abducted on March 23 in the eastern Bekaa Valley after entering Lebanon from Syria. The motive for their abduction remains unclear. Eleven Lebanese were charged last week with the kidnapping.
"There are still many versions, but the most concrete, or fact-based, is that some people have been arrested" in connection with the kidnapping, Paet said.
"Other than that, there are no facts," he said.
"My hope is that the investigation will lead to positive results so that [they] can return home," he added.
A previously unheard of group, Haraket Al-Nahda Wal-Islah (Movement for Renewal and Reform), has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping and demanded an unspecified ransom to free the seven Estonians.
The claim was made in an email to a local news website but has not been authenticated by security officials.
Authorities have said the Estonians may have been moved across the porous border to Syria.
A police intelligence officer and a main suspect in the kidnapping were killed on April 11 in a shootout in Majdal Anjar, a town near the Syrian border known to harbor Sunni extremist groups and fugitives.
Abductions have been rare in Lebanon since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war during which nearly 100 foreigners, mostly Americans and western Europeans, were kidnapped.
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