PARIS, March 29 (AFP) - France has steady contacts with the Iraqi kidnappers of missing French reporter Florence Aubenas and has been given "reassuring information" about her fate, Prime Minister Jean Pierre Raffarin said Tuesday.

"We now have contacts that seem steady, which allows us to have some hope," Raffarin told lawmakers in the lower-house National Assembly.

"Since the appeal we launched for the kidnappers to communicate only with official French services, those services now have reassuring information" about the fate of Aubenas.

Aubenas, a senior correspondent for the left-leaning Liberation newspaper, and her Iraqi interpreter Hussein Hanun al-Saadi went missing from her Baghdad hotel on January 5.

The veteran reporter made a desperate plea for her life in a video released on March 1.

"Please understand that I must keep these discussions a secret. Prudence remains the rule," Raffarin said.