RP emissaries in fresh bid to end hostage crisis

RP emissaries in fresh bid to end hostage crisis

JOLO, Philippines (AFP): Government emissaries are returning to this southern Philippines island in a fresh bid to win the freedom of at least some of the 12 Westerners held by Muslim guerrillas, sources said on Wednesday.

Negotiator Farouk Hussein spent the night in the Abu Sayyaf jungle hideout on Tuesday, while two other emissaries will follow his tracks on Thursday, a government source said.

Sources close to the talks said the visits increased the chances that some of the Westerners could be freed within a week. Hussein returned from the visit on Wednesday with news that Abu Sayyaf leaders would prefer to free the four women among their Western captives -- Sonia Wendling and Maryse Burgot of France, Franco-Lebanese Marie Moarbes and South African Monique Strydom -- ahead of the eight men.

Aside from the women they also hold 25 other hostages -- three Frenchmen, two Germans, two Finns, a South African and 17 Filipinos.

"They cannot release hostages simultaneously for fear of military operations" and insist "on a staggered basis", Hussein told AFP.

Philippine officials have acknowledged the Muslim guerrilla kidnappers had to have some guarantee for their personal safety for the crisis to end.

President Joseph Estrada's spokesman Ricardo Puno said on Tuesday that while Manila wished that all the Western hostages are freed together, the chief hostage negotiator was authorized "to go ahead and make decisions on the ground."

Foreign Secretary Domingo Siazon has raised the idea of foreign asylum, but chief government negotiator Roberto Aventajado insisted on Wednesday that the pronouncement was "theoretical in nature" and nothing has been put on the table.

Hussein also stressed that there had been "no request of that whatsoever," and that in any case, they were unlikely to accept it.

Libya has also denied making an asylum offer.

The gunmen on Wednesday freed a construction worker abducted in Jolo on August 1.

But, following a recurring pattern throughout the 123-day old crisis, they swiftly replaced him with a woman school teacher and a 16 year-old girl from separate abductions in nearby Talipao town.

Local officials said the women were likely to become captive brides. Suspected Abu Sayyaf men also tossed a grenade at a Jolo cinema on Wednesday, but there were no casualties and damage was minimal.

A Libyan charity's offer of development aid worth millions of dollars to Jolo and other Muslim areas of the largely Roman Catholic Philippines has driven Manila's recent efforts to crack the hostage crisis.

The offer was rejected at the 11th hour on Saturday, ostensibly due to fears of military movements but privately due to a disagreement over ransom, according to government sources. Press reports said Libya has since agreed to fork out a 12 million-dollar cash ransom to sweeten the deal.

Aventajado insisted on Wednesday that the figure is "not accurate, it's not part of what we're discussing." He declined to discuss details but said he was "still optimistic that we will be able to win the release of the hostages very shortly."

Mohamed Ismail, an official of the Libyan charity headed by a son of Libyan leader Col. Moammar Qaddafi echoed this theme. "They (Abu Sayyaf) have to come to a solution at one point. They cannot keep the hostages forever," Ismail told AFP.

The charity is keeping a passenger jet on standby at a central Philippines air force base "until we have the hostages," he added.

Qaddafi wants to fly the western hostages to Tripoli, where they would be released to their government representatives as part of efforts to burnish the image of a country accused by the United States of promoting terrorism.

The crisis began when Abu Sayyaf gunmen launched a raid across the border in nearby Malaysia on April 23 and abducted tourists and resort staff whom they shipped across the sea border to Jolo.