World IN BRIEF : COSTA RICA : Embassy Kidnapers Threaten Hostages

A band of kidnapers threatened to start using strong-arm tactics against an estimated 25 hostages in the Nicaraguan Embassy in San Jose, the Costa Rican capital, after telephone service was cut off. The kidnapers’ leader, Jose Manuel Urbina Lara, “told me he was going to bind and gag the hostages unless they re-establish the lines,” said Nicaraguan Archbishop Manuel Obando y Bravo, serving as a mediator in the hostage crisis that began Monday. Urbina, believed to be a 30-year-old lawyer and former Contra who fought against Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinistas, said the kidnaping was intended in part to force President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro to break her ties with the Sandinistas, whom she defeated in a 1990 election but has included in her government.