Veteran Mediator Says Cash Is Key to Hostages’ Release

Nur Mutalib has been through this before. In fact, he’s negotiated so many releases of hostages over the years--among them a Taiwanese, a Singaporean, a Malaysian and many Filipinos--that he’s lost track of all the kidnappings. But one thing he knows for sure. The captives’ release always comes down to one issue: money.

Kidnapping in the southern Philippines, the Libyan-trained former guerrilla points out, is a growth industry in which the guilty are never brought to justice. And once again, Mutalib has been called on by the government to negotiate the end to a hostage crisis, this one the most sensational that this sleepy little island in the Celebes Sea has ever seen.

Eleven miles southeast of the town of Jolo, on fog-shrouded Mt. Daho, near a coconut plantation in the town of Talipao, 21 mostly foreign hostages snatched April 23 from a Malaysian diving resort are being held by Islamic rebels known as Abu Sayyaf--a group that has no political agenda and no practiced ideology, and delivers no social programs to the impoverished locals despite its calls for the creation of a Muslim state.

“If the army does not try to invade, the rebels will not kill the hostages. That’s definite,” Mutalib, 49, who heads the government’s nine-member, front-line negotiating team, said Monday. “We can negotiate a peaceful conclusion. But if the army attacks, then there’s a problem, a real problem.

“This case with the foreigners is different from others I’ve dealt with for two reasons,” Mutalib said. “First, you’ve got the army in a threatening posture in the area. And second, many of these hostages are Europeans, and the rebels may assume they’re rich.”

Mutalib said his representatives visited the hostages Monday and brought in a jeep-load of food and medicine. Negotiations began May 1 but were suspended the next day when rebels skirmished with government troops ringing the stronghold. Talks had not resumed because Abu Sayyaf had yet to make known its demands.

Unlike an offshoot, Abu Sayyaf Basilan, which has tortured and beheaded captives on the nearby island of Basilan, the group on Jolo, known officially as Abu Sayyaf Sulu, has--to the knowledge of intelligence sources--never killed a hostage. But negotiations that Mutalib has led in the past often have dragged on for weeks, even months, and he has no reason to believe that these will be any shorter.

On Sunday, for instance, Abu Sayyaf released a Philippine bank clerk, Patrick Viray, whose father is American. Viray was kidnapped Feb. 5 while bicycling and held for a while with the foreign hostages in Talipao. He had been captured by freelance kidnappers and sold to Abu Sayyaf, which originally requested $40,000 for his release but after two months of talks settled for the going rate, about $5,000.

Mutalib said that when negotiations resume for the release of the foreigners--10 Malaysians, a German family of three, a South African couple, two French nationals, two Finnish men and a Lebanese woman, being held along with a Filipina--his first move will be to try to persuade the rebels to free two ailing hostages. They are a Frenchman and a 57-year-old German woman with a heart problem.

Abu Sayyaf had only about 200 armed and trained men when it kidnapped a group of schoolchildren, teachers and a priest March 20 on Basilan, where the Philippine government responded by attacking the rebels’ base camp. Since then, Philippine intelligence sources say, the group has recruited about 400 more young fighters by giving each a $500 bonus and promising a share of the ransom that the release of the foreigners could bring.

President Joseph Estrada, under international pressure to resolve the crisis on Jolo peacefully, has promised that his troops will not risk the hostages’ lives by launching an attack and has reiterated the government policy of not paying ransom. But the fact is that virtually every kidnapping in the Philippines is secretly resolved monetarily--sometimes with stacks of pesos concealed in bags of rice that rebels have demanded for the poor.

About 2,000 Philippine troops have established a loose cordon around Talipao and are constantly on the move, collecting intelligence. This has forced the rebels to haul their captives around as well. After being split into smaller groups, the hostages were reunited in one area Sunday, but negotiators fear that a chance encounter between the soldiers and rebels could set off a battle that would have dire results for the hostages.

The army has blocked the rutted road leading into the dense jungle area where the hostages are being held and placed the town of Jolo under a 9 p.m.-to-3 a.m. curfew.