THE mother of the North-East journalist being held by the Taliban in Afghanistan, believes her daughter may have been attempting to track down the terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden when she was arrested.

The news came as Yvonne Ridley's eight-year-old daughter, Daisy, sent an impassioned plea to Prime Minister Tony Blair to secure her mother's release.

The youngster, who celebrates her ninth birthday on Wednesday, has written a letter to Mr Blair asking him "to get my mummy home safely".

Hopes of her release have risen with the news that a reporter from Miss Ridley's newspaper, the Sunday Express, has been sent to Pakistan to collect her passport and luggage from her hotel.

And reports from Kabul suggest that the Taliban may be softening its stance on the 43-year-old former Northern Echo reporter, who was detained early on Friday.

Miss Ridley is reportedly being detained in a house with a garden, and was free to roam around the compound.

It also emerged that she was being provided with clean clothes, food four times a day, and that she had even made demands for cigarettes.

Last night, Miss Ridley's mother Joyce said: "That doesn't surprise me. She will have probably insisted on those things.

"Knowing Yvonne, she will get her own way during this.

"I have been wondering about how she has been getting her clothes changed but she will probably be demanding things from them."

Mrs Ridley added that she was more hopeful about the whole situation after being told by Yvonne's colleagues that she would be released once her journalistic credentials were confirmed.

"I have been told that the Taliban have said that if she can prove she is a journalist, she will be released."

She revealed that her daughter could have been trying to track down bin Laden when she was picked up by members of the Taliban.

Speaking from her home in West Pelton, County Durham, Mrs Ridley said: "She had previously been in regular contact telling me what she was going to do the next day, and often I would try to persuade her not to do anything risky.

"But she is strong willed, and on this occasion she didn't tell me she was planning to cross the border. It was a complete shock."

Mrs Ridley, 74, also revealed that her daughter had spoken of wanting to interview bin Laden in the past.

"About three or four years ago, she told me she was thinking about travelling to Afghanistan to try to find bin Laden and interview him. She never went, but it could be why she entered Afghanistan this time," she said.

Mrs Ridley, who took Daisy back to her boarding school in Windermere, Cumbria, with Miss Ridley's father, Allan, yesterday afternoon, said her granddaughter was "quite happy" despite the situation.

She said: "We've tried to keep it from her, and we've told her that her mother is on a big adventure.

"Despite that, she is obviously missing her mother and she has taken it upon herself to write a letter to Tony Blair, pleading with him to get her mummy home safely."

Mr and Mrs Ridley are keeping in regular contact with the Foreign Office.

A spokeswoman for the Foreign Office said it was in constant talks with the Taliban, but refused to comment on reports from Pakistan that the regime would release her as soon as they received proof that she is a journalist.

The editor of the Sunday Express yesterday published an open letter confirming Miss Ridley's journalistic credentials.

Reports from Afghanistan said that the Taliban had sent a special team to the northeastern city of Jalalabad to investigate Miss Ridley's case.

Fraser Kemp, Labour MP for Houghton and Washington and a close friend of the Ridley family, has also been in close touch with the Foreign Office. He has already lobbied the Government on Miss Ridley's behalf.