Will Free Captives, Philippine Rebels Say : Insurgency: American and Japanese won’t be harmed and no ransom will be sought, a spokesman says.

Philippine Communist guerrillas will free a kidnaped U.S. Peace Corps volunteer and a Japanese aid worker unharmed and without ransom within the month, a purported rebel spokesman said Friday.

A man who identified himself as a commander of the New People’s Army told Philippine reporters by telephone that NPA troops are holding Timothy Swanson, of Cheyenne, Wyo., and Fumio Mizuno, of the Japanese Organization for Industrial, Spiritual and Cultural Advancement, at a jungle camp in the mountains of Negros Island.

“They are safe. We will turn them over within the month,” he said, adding that any military rescue attempts “might endanger their lives.”

The caller identified himself as “Ka (Comrade) Efren,” and said he headed the island’s NPA regional command. Neither his identity nor his ties to the abductors could be independently confirmed. A transcript of his call was released in Manila.

A U.S. official here said, however, that the call was consistent with previous NPA operations, and appeared reliable. He said the guerrillas apparently were responding to widespread criticism over kidnaping aid workers, who are generally popular in the Philippines. “What this statement says is it was a mistake,” he said.

Swanson, 26, was abducted June 13 from the village of Patag. Mizuno, 36, was taken May 29 at a nearby silkworm farm. Both men worked in forest and farming projects on Negros, about 300 miles south-southeast of Manila, and are married to Filipina women.

Citing NPA threats, the Peace Corps announced the evacuation of all 261 volunteers from the Philippines last week, indefinitely ending one of the largest and oldest Peace Corps programs. But U.S. officials said they learned of Swanson’s abduction only after they began the evacuation.

Retired Roman Catholic Bishop Antonio Fortich, who has close contacts with the Negros rebels, said Friday that he is optimistic that the NPA will free the two aid workers shortly.

“The two men are good gentlemen who have not committed human rights crimes against the people,” Fortich said in a phone interview from Bacolod, provincial capital in Negros. “There is no reason for the NPA to prolong their stay.”

Fortich said the NPA, which has fought a 21-year insurgency, considers foreign aid workers potential targets because “they offer the people a better way of life. That is a threat to the NPA.”

Edgar B. Uytiepo, a Bacolod attorney who is negotiating for Mizuno’s release, said Mizuno’s abductors “suspected him of feeding information to the military. They had a trial, and he proved himself innocent.”

Speaking in both English and Tagalog, the caller said the NPA “invited” the two foreigners to “dialogue” with NPA leaders because of suspicions that they and their organizations were involved in government counterinsurgency operations.

“We did not harm them because we believe they were not conscious of what they were involved in,” the caller said. He described Swanson as “an American rah-rah, ready to spread goodwill, not knowing he was being used in an evil scheme.”

“Even if they are guilty, we will spare them this time,” he said. “But we will not be so kind the next time.”