DATE=10/12/00
TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT
TITLE=ECUADOR KIDNAPPING (L-ONLY)
NUMBER=2-267854
BYLINE=RALPH KURTENBACH
DATELINE=QUITO, ECUADOR
INTRO: Vice President of Ecuador Pedro Pinto says a Colombian guerilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, is claiming responsibility for the abduction of 10 foreign petroleum workers in Ecuador's northeast Amazon region. Ralph Kurtenbach reports from Quito.
TEXT: Mr. Pinto says the group claims the kidnapping is in retaliation for
the Colombian government's seven-point-five-billion-dollar crackdown on drug trafficking called Plan Colombia. He says the guerillas abducted the 10 workers at a petroleum field operated by the Spanish-Argentine oil firm, Repsol-Y-P-F. Ecuador's military said in a statement the rebels flew off with their hostages in a commandeered helicopter belonging to a private firm.
A spokeswoman at the U-S Embassy in Ecuador, Susan Crystal, says the United States considers the abduction a terrorist act. She says the embassy does
not negotiate with terrorists. The petroleum firm says the oil workers were abducted from the Tivacuno oil field in Ecuador, about 75 kilometers south of the Ecuadorian and Colombian border. (Signed).
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Embassies in Quito for the governments of France, Chile and Argentina could not immediately confirm the abduction.
Ecuador's Joint Military Command issued a statement saying the chopper's destination upon leaving northeast Ecuador was presumably Colombia. While Crystal confirmed
five U-S citizens among the hostages, the military statement lists six. The military's list of hostages is as follows:
From France: Jean Louis Froidurot an Jamy Marcelly.
From the United States: Dennis Correy, Steve Derry, Jason Wavey, David
Bradley, Ron Sanders, and Arnold Arfol.
From Chile: German Schultz.
And from Argentina: Juan Rodriguez.
NEB/RK/TDW
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