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Kidnapped Peru pipeline workers freed
( 2003-06-11 09:39) (7)

Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo (R), accompanied by Defense Minister Aurelio Loret de Mola, gives a press conference about the kidnapped gas project workers, June 10, 2003. All 60 kidnapped workers at a major gas project in southeastern Peru were freed, a day after they were abducted by suspected leftist rebels, police sources said. [Reuters]

More than 70 workers building a major gas project in southeastern Peru were freed "safe and sound" on Tuesday one day after being kidnapped by Shining Path rebels, President Alejandro Toledo said.

"We surrounded the members of Shining Path, who took 71 hostages, rescuing all of them safe and sound," Toledo said at a news conference in Lima, hailing the military and police for a "rapid, efficient" operation.

"This has been a nightmare with a happy ending," he said.

Toledo, who declared a state of emergency late last month to rein in violent protests against his rule, pledged that Peru would defeat the vestiges of the Maoist group that waged a bloody war against the state in the 1980s-1990s.

He said officials were searching for the kidnappers near Toccate, a remote construction camp in a mountainous jungle region where Argentine conglomerate Techint is building a pipeline for a giant natural gas project.

Toledo said the hostages were freed without paying the kidnappers -- who were demanding $1 million, weapons and high-technology communications gear from Techint. But released hostage Julio Aguilar said he and others were freed after "it appeared that the company met their demands."

Aguilar told RPP radio that 15 to 20 armed people, including a number of women, entered the camp "peacefully" in the early hours of Monday. Among the hostages were six Colombians and one Chilean.

Toledo was the first to confirm that the kidnappers were part of Shining Path, which was once one of Latin America's most brutal insurgencies but whose sway has faded since the 1992 capture of its legendary leader, Abimael Guzman.

DIE-HARD REBELS

The government says die-hard rebels still operate in remote jungle areas, working hand-in-hand with drug runners. Peru is the world's No. 2 cocaine-producing nation, and the group has reared its head occasionally.

Last year, 10 people were killed by a Shining Path car bomb outside the U.S. embassy in Lima.

The swift rescue was a relief for Toledo, who faces dismal approval ratings and who many in this poor country complain has failed to fulfill flopped on pledges of jobs and prosperity.

Peru has high hopes for the gas project Camisea, an up to $2 billion deal that the Toledo government hails as a foreign investment model and says will turn Peru into an energy exporter.

Techint leads a group building the 430-mile pipeline from gas fields in the southeastern jungle to the Pacific coast. That group, Transportadora de Gas de Peru (TGP), also includes Argentine oil firm Pluspetrol, U.S. Hunt Oil and others.

Camisea has been accused by critics of threatening the jungle ecosystem and force out indigenous groups. Last month, native groups protested outside the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, DC, which is mulling a $75 million loan to the project.

The project has not been without hitches. Last year, disgruntled Techint workers themselves stormed another construction camp and wounded 10 people.

 
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