ROME: Italy said Monday it would not negotiate with an Al-Qaeda group that has claimed responsibility for kidnapping two Italians in Mauritania.

Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb said it was behind the abduction in an audio recording broadcast on Sunday, according to Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television station.

In the recording, a spokesman for the group said the kidnappings were linked to "crimes committed by the Italian government in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Italy's Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said Rome had no direct contact with any representative of the group.

"If we decided to negotiate, even just once, we would have legitimised a terrorist organisation. Anyone who negotiates with terrorists supports terrorists," he said in an interview on the Sky TG 24 television channel.

Frattini said there would be no change in Italy's policy in Afghanistan as the country was committed to the international coalition there.

Italians Sergio Cicala, 65, and Philomene Kabore, 39, went missing in Mauritania's southeast on December 18, when their minibus was found empty and riddled with bullets, security sources said.

The couple's disappearance followed the abduction of three Spaniards in northern Mauritania in late November, another kidnapping claimed by the same Al-Qaeda group.