Release of hostages in southern Philippines put
off until next week
JOLO, Philippines, Aug 24 (AFP)
- Muslim rebels in the southern Philippines are unlikely to free any of their 12 western
hostages before next week, sources close to the negotiations said Thursday.
"Definitely, this weekend
there will be no release," one source told AFP.
The sources said chief
government negotiator Roberto Aventajado had been working out the final details of a
Libyan-backed plan in Manila, which would likely be conveyed to the Abu Sayyaf group on
the southern island of Jolo on Saturday at the earliest.
Even under a "best-case
scenario," government negotiators would only fly south for the preliminaries of any
planned release by next week, the sources added.
Philippine President Joseph
Estrada's spokesman Ricardo Puno said in the nearby city of Zamboanga on Thursday that the
government had no time frame for the settlement of the four-month long hostage crisis.
But he added: "We're still
optimistic there may be positive results soon."
Government emissaries continued
to visit the kidnappers' jungle hideout this week while Abu Sayyaf leader Galib Andang,
also known as Commander Robot, is in daily satellite phone contact with Aventajado.
Government negotiator Farouk
Hussein met the Abu Sayyaf leaders in their camp on Wednesday to discuss proposals by the
gunmen to release the hostages in batches, beginning with four female westerners.
The kidnappers were seeking to
hold on to some foreign and Filipino hostages to the very end to ensure the military would
not attack them, Hussein said.
Government intelligence sources
said a local ethnic-Chinese tycoon, Lee Peng Wee, credited with earlier obtaining the
freedom of all nine Malaysians also held by the Abu Sayyaf, had additionally sent his
emissaries to the gunmen's mountain hideout.
Lee has had a strained
relationship with chief negotiator Aventajado but both sides have said they will set aside
their differences for the national interest.
The crisis began on April 23
when the Abu Sayyaf snatched 21 Malaysian, German, Filipino, French, Finnish, South
African and Franco-Lebanese hostages from a Malaysian resort and brought them to Jolo
across the sea border.
Although the kidnappers have
since released several hostages from the resort, including nine Malaysians, one German and
a Filipina, they have seized other captives including three French television journalists.
The group, which has been
waging a guerrilla war for a separate Islamic state in the southern Philippines, now holds
five French, two German, two Finnish, two South African, and one Franco-Lebanese captive.
The rest of the 29 hostages are Filipinos.
The westerners were to have
been freed last Saturday but the Abu Sayyaf called off the deal because of an unspecified
detail between the rebel group and Libyan mediator Rajab Azzarouq.
The reworked formula is
supposed to smoothen this out, and it has been approved by the Libyans who are taking an
active role in trying to obtain the freedom of the hostages.
Details of the formula also
have not been disclosed, but press reports said Libya is offering ransom payments of 12
million dollars for the western captives on top of a 25-million-dollar development aid
package for Muslim areas in the largely-Roman Catholic Philippines.
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