Gunmen in Georgia Free U.N. Hostage

Georgian gunmen released a Uruguayan serviceman on Sunday but continued to hold three other U.N. military observers and several other hostages after four days under siege at a remote farmhouse.

Capt. Julio Navas smiled and waved as he was driven away from the village of Dzhikhashkari in a car belonging to the security minister of the former Soviet republic.

His release was the first sign of progress in negotiations between local officials and about a dozen gunmen who seized the U.N. hostages on Thursday in the nearby town of Zugdidi. It was not clear if any deal was struck to secure his release.

“The negotiations have started and we are quite happy with the progress so far. I think everything will be all right,” hostage-taker Zurab Shoniya told Georgian television.

The gunmen--believed to be followers of Georgia’s late first president, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, who was ousted in 1992--were still holding another Uruguayan, a Czech and a Swede from a United Nations monitoring force, along with several people in the house they overran on the first day of the drama.

A Georgian television producer who visited the home on Sunday said a 3-year-old boy and his mother had been allowed to leave.

Hundreds of Georgian troops had surrounded the site, where the gunmen were demanding the release of people arrested after a Feb. 9 bid to assassinate President Eduard A. Shevardnadze, the successor and onetime rival of Gamsakhurdia.

Shevardnadze, the former Soviet foreign minister, was not hurt in the assassination attempt in Tbilisi. On Sunday he said that Georgia would solve the hostage situation peacefully but that the government’s patience had limits.

“We are ready for dialogue, but only on the condition that the hostages are freed,” he said. “I am sure that this problem will be solved in a peaceful way.”