RP hostage crisis enters 2nd week in deadlock
RP hostage crisis enters 2nd week in deadlock
JOLO, Philippines (Agencies): A multinational hostage crisis entered its second week on Sunday without a breakthrough in sight as separatist militants repeated their warning to behead the 21 people seized from Sipadan, an island resort currently being disputed by Indonesia and Malaysia.
Chief government negotiator Nur Misuari has yet to hold face- to-face talks with the kidnappers and is only able to communicate through intermediaries, Defense Secretary Orlando Mercado said.
He added that Misuari is still trying to clarify the gunmen's demands and their chain of command.
Malaysia has sent its police chief to the southern Philippine island, President Joseph Estrada's office confirmed, adding that tropical disease medicines reached Zamboanga on Sunday from the Malaysian port of Sandakan.
The Finnish, French and German embassies in the Philippine capital Manila were planning an airlift of provisions for their kidnapped nationals, the French foreign ministry said in Paris. The captives also include nationals from South Africa, Lebanon and the Philippines.
They were snatched from the dive resort of Sipadan on Easter Sunday by the Abu Sayyaf, a small rebel group waging a guerrilla campaign for a separate Islamic state in the southern third of the predominantly Roman Catholic Philippines.
A rebel spokesman has demanded that Manila bring envoys from the United Nations and Organization of the Islamic Conference for talks to free the hostages.
However the Philippines government has rejected their demand. "We are a sovereign state here and we will not allow the situation to turn into a circus," Mercado said,
"Unless he (Misuari) is replaced by President Joseph Estrada, he would stay as the chief government negotiator," Mercado added. Misuari, a former Muslim rebel leader who now heads an autonomous Muslim region that includes Jolo, demanded Sunday that the rebels name their representative for talks and put down their demands in a signed document "so there is no way for them to change."
"There should be unanimity in their leadership to accept my mission," Misuari said in nearby Zamboanga city, "or else I will not proceed with the negotiations."
A rebel spokesman said the group did not want to deal with Misuari and threatened to behead some of the foreign hostages unless he was replaced with government representatives of the foreign hostages.
Their spokesman told a Johannesburg radio station on Saturday that some hostages would be executed in the next two or three days unless the military lifted its siege of another Abu Sayyaf unit on nearby Basilan island, where a second group of at least 27 Filipino hostages are held.
Philippine forces prepared Sunday to spray tear gas into a tunnel in a sprawling rebel stronghold where the 27 hostages have been held for six weeks, officials said.
Troops were guarding the entries to the tunnel, where some rebels fled after the military overran the densely forested Abu Sayyaf stronghold on southern Basilan island, Col. Ernesto de Guzman said.
Fighting also continued in other areas deep in the jungle, with stiff resistance from the fleeing rebels, he said.
About 1,500 troops began attacking the rebel camp on Mount Ponoh Mahajid eight days ago to rescue the hostages, mostly children seized from two schools on March 20.
Networks of tunnels, foxholes and bunkers crisscross the camp, and soldiers are unsure how many hostages and rebels may be inside the tunnel they plan to gas, de Guzman said.
Asked if children would be harmed by the tear gas, he replied: "They will just be stunned."
The government said Sunday that the Basilan camp had been overrun, though they found no trace of the hostages and their captors.
On Saturday, Filipino journalist Arlyn de la Cruz was taken by the kidnappers to the Jolo camp to speak to the 21 foreign hostages, who were crammed into a single bamboo hut with no toilet and guarded by about 250 armed rebels.
Guarded by around 250 rebels and crammed into a single bamboo hut without a toilet, she said the hostages were hungry and dehydrated after suffering diarrhea caused by drinking contaminated water.
Their feet were bruised from hours of walking and they were now "too weak to move," she said, adding that some of the captives were wearing only the bathing suits they were dressed in when they were abducted off the Borneo coast a week ago.