Bid to Settle Trinidad Crisis Stalls : Uprising: The premier reportedly offers to quit and call new elections to end coup. Rebels also seek amnesty. At least 39 people are held hostage, and 27 have been reported killed.

Muslim rebels still held the prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago and at least 38 other hostages Sunday as negotiations to end the twin-island nation’s crisis stalled amid reports of widespread looting and an early morning gun battle at one of the hostage sites.

News agencies, quoting an executive of Trinidad’s state-owned television station, said that Prime Minister A. N. R. Robinson had offered to resign and call early elections in return for the hostages’ freedom. But there was no confirmation of that report from other government sources.

A spokesman for the Muslim group attempting the coup said that a final agreement on amnesty for the armed rebels was close. But a government source quoted by the Caribbean News Agency (CANA) in Barbados said that the negotiations were snagged over legal terms and by reservations being voiced by Trinidad’s police and armed forces.

No further mention was made Sunday of reports that Robinson and other hostages had been wired to explosive devices and threatened with death in the event of any armed rescue attempt. Robinson and 11 Cabinet ministers and members of Parliament are captives inside Trinidad’s Red House, the Parliament building in downtown Port of Spain, the capital. Between 26 and 28 other captives are being held in two buildings of the state-run Trinidad and Tobago Television and Radio complex.

A gun battle between the police and members of the armed Jamaat al Muslimeen rebel group broke out early Sunday at the television station, CANA reported. It quoted the station’s news director, Jones P. Madeira, himself a hostage, as saying that two of the Muslims were wounded. A shortwave radio broadcast, purportedly made by Robinson, appealed for a cease-fire, CANA said.

The news agency also quoted extensively from an interview with Yasin abu Bakr, leader of Jamaat al Muslimeen, Arabic for “Group of Muslims,” in which he denied “malicious propaganda” that his movement was supported by Libya’s radical leader, Col. Moammar Kadafi, and that the rebels had asked to be flown to Libya.

“What are we going to Libya for?” the CANA interview quoted Abu Bakr as asking. “We are all Trinidadians, that is why we are here, that is why we are fighting in any case, because it is our country. There is nothing to do with Libya.”

Speaking by telephone to CANA from the television station, Abu Bakr said that the armed uprising was launched because “something had to shock us into reality.”

The offer that Robinson reportedly made to step down and call early elections was described by TV news director Madeira, according to an Associated Press report.

“My information is that Prime Minister Robinson has agreed to step down and that an interim government of major political parties will run the country until elections are held in 90 days,” Madeira was quoted as saying.

Robinson won the parliamentary elections by a landslide in 1986, and the next elections are not scheduled until 1991.

Abu Bakr’s group of 200 to 250 followers and their families, organized about six years ago, has long been viewed with suspicion by the government as violent outlaws. Abu Bakr, a former police officer in his mid-40s, has in turn accused the government of corruption, squandering state money and failing to focus on hunger and health care.

Speaking of Robinson, who was shot in the leg when he refused to sign a document that some reports described as a letter of resignation, Abu Bakr told CANA, “All is well at the Red House,” the Parliament building where the prime minister and other officials are held captive. “There has been a great spirit of compromise between our members and Mr. Robinson and some of the members of Parliament,” Abu Bakr was quoted as saying. “Hopefully the country will be back on its feet in a couple of days.”

Two other political leaders, National Security Minister Selwyn Richardson and Parliament member Leo Des Vignes also were shot in the legs, according to a news report from Port of Spain.

In Washington, officials said that U.S. and Trinidadian officials have consulted in the past two days on the possibility of sending State Department experts in hostage negotiations to the island.

White House spokesman Sean Walsh said Sunday that the United States is “willing to entertain any proposal by the government of Trinidad and Tobago, and will examine any request carefully.” But Walsh said that Trinidad has made no formal requests for assistance and that officials in Washington believe that Trinidad hopes to resolve the crisis itself.

Any U.S. military assistance was considered highly unlikely, officials said, both because Trinidad is not likely to request such help and because Washington probably would not approve such a move.

Meanwhile, the ransacking and pillaging of stores and shopping centers in what has become the virtual no man’s land of downtown Port of Spain continued Sunday, according to news reports reaching here. Acting Police Commissioner Leonard Taylor acknowledged that “our best efforts haven’t provided the desired results,” but he warned of “stronger measures which will certainly be injurious to some citizens.”

In a radio appeal to end the looting, Anglican Bishop Clive Abdullah said he had been told that whole convoys of vehicles were loading up on refrigerators and videos.

A Port of Spain businessman was quoted as complaining that too many of the tiny island country’s 1,500 military troops and 5,000 police were concentrated at the hostage sites, leaving the city wide open to the looters. As the crisis entered its third day, he estimated losses at more than $50 million. At least 27 people, including police and military personnel, have reportedly been killed in the violence.

Bishop Abdullah, Roman Catholic Archbishop Anthony Pantin and Anglican clergyman Knolly Clarke have been acting as middlemen in the negotiations between the Muslim group and the government. In exchange for ending the crisis peacefully, the rebels reportedly have asked for a total amnesty, including legal pardons from the Commonwealth country’s president.

“All the principles have been agreed, and the final arrangements for conducting the amnesty are being concluded with the assistance of Archbishop of Port of Spain Pantin and Anglican Bishop Abdullah,” said the Muslim group’s spokesman, Bilal Abdullah, in a telephone interview with CANA from the TV station.

A strict 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew continued in Port of Spain. Although Piarco International Airport, the country’s main link to the outside world, was technically reopened during daylight hours Sunday, international and local Caribbean airlines refused to resume service until the crisis is resolved. Charter pilots on nearby Caribbean islands such as Barbados and Grenada also refused to fly to Port of Spain.

Times staff writer Melissa Healy, in Washington, contributed to this story.