UN ambassador against genital mutilation missing (AFP)

VIENNA (AFP) - An Austrian former model who campaigns against female genital multilation on behalf of the United Nations has gone missing in Brussels, officials in Vienna said Friday.

Waris Dirie was multilated as a young girl and fled her native Somalia aged 13 to escape a forced marriage. She was last seen in the early hours of Wednesday, foreign ministry spokesman Peter Launsky-Tieffenthal said.

"From what we understand, she disappeared at around two or three o'clock in the morning after getting a taxi to return to her hotel," he told AFP.

Earlier, 43-year-old Dirie had become lost in the Belgian capital and had been helped by police, who mistakenly took her to a hotel from the same chain as the one she was staying in but at which she had no reservation, he said.

As a UN goodwill ambassador, she was to attend a conference on genital multilation in Brussels to mark international women's day on Saturday, and on Friday had been due to visit Kerkrade in the Netherlands to receive a prize.

Dirie was attacked in her home in Vienna in March 2004 by a Portuguese man who had become obsessed with her and followed her more than 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) from her former home in the Welsh capital Cardiff.

In addition to modelling work, Dirie was known for writing four books of memoirs and she had a minor role in the 1987 James Bond movie, "The Living Daylights".

Her disappearance came less than a month after another African-born model who campaigned against female circumcision, Katoucha Niane, was found floating drowned in the river Seine in Paris. Her autopsy found no signs of violence.

There is as yet no indication that these events are linked.