Peace Corps Volunteer’s Release to Be Negotiated

Authorities will negotiate with communist rebels rather than use military force to try to gain the release of a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer, a provincial official said today.

Timothy Swanson, 26, of Cheyenne, Wyo., was kidnaped June 13 from his home in the village of Patag on the central island of Negros. He was taken by four to eight New People’s Army guerrillas, who told his Filipino wife they were just “borrowing” him.

Daniel Lacson, governor of Negros Occidental province, said he met today with U.S. officials, who gave him authority to work for Swanson’s release.

“No military operation unless we exhaust political means,” Lacson said. He said he would form a committee to negotiate with the rebels.

“The bottom line is to get Swanson alive,” Lacson said.

Swanson was among seven Peace Corps volunteers assigned to Negros, where he worked in a nursery project.

The U.S. Embassy said it learned of the abduction only Saturday because the rebels warned Swanson’s wife, a rural schoolteacher, not to report the incident.

She did so only after U.S. officials ordered the 261 Peace Corps volunteers to leave the Philippines because intelligence reports indicated rebels might try to kill or kidnap them.

Negros, 300 miles southeast of Manila, is a stronghold of the rebels, whose 21-year-old insurgency is aimed at establishing a Marxist state in the Philippines.