Negotiators expect Philippine kidnappers to release at least one hostage

Muslim rebels holding 21 hostages in a remote Philippine jungle were expected to release at least one ailing captive, negotiators said Saturday.

The negotiators said they had reached an "understanding" with the Abu Sayyaf rebels that a sick German woman and perhaps a French man would be freed later in the day.

"There is some kind of understanding, but of course they can always change their mind," said negotiator Robert Aventajado. "Nothing is 100 percent in this kind of situation."

Aventajado did not say whether negotiators had offered the rebels anything in return.

He said the German woman's condition has improved in recent days and her high blood pressure has stabilized.

The Abu Sayyaf decision, if true, would be a shift from a day earlier, when a guerrilla leader said the separatist group had decided against freeing the two ailing hostages.

Contacts with the rebels, broken since Wednesday, were re-established Friday night when the guerrillas delivered seven letters their captives had written to loved ones.

Envoys of the negotiators told the rebels at that meeting that releasing the two sick hostages would help start talks on freeing all the captives, and the rebels said they would consider it, said a negotiator who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The nearly three-week hostage crisis, however, appeared to be far from over.

The rebels have yet to present a list of formal demands. Informally, however, they have said they want a number of things that are not likely to be acceptable to the government: independence for the region, the establishment of Islamic law, and a ban on foreign fishing boats.

An Abu Sayyaf leader said the hostages had been moved by the rebels to a new "safe place" much deeper in the mountains of remote Jolo Island.

Contact with the rebels had been cut since Wednesday, when Abdul Rajab Azzarouq, a former Libyan ambassador to the Philippines who is helping negotiate, met with the guerrillas and asked for the release of Renate Wallert, a German woman with hypertension, and Stephane Loisy, a French man with a urinary tract infection.

The rebels said they would reply on Thursday, but movements by government troops near the planned meeting place apparently spooked the rebels and they never appeared.

The military was pulled further back Friday to prevent a reoccurrence.

The hostages - three Germans, two French citizens, two South Africans, two Finns, a Lebanese, nine Malaysians and two Filipinos - were kidnapped April 23 from Malaysia's Sipadan Island and taken to Jolo, an island at the tip of the southern Philippines about an hour away.

The Abu Sayyaf, the smaller and more extreme of two Muslim rebel groups in the southern Philippines, is also holding a separate group of Filipino hostages in nearby Basilan province. They seized those hostages, many of whom are children, on March 20 from two schools.

The military overran the rebels' stronghold in Basilan last month and later rescued 15 hostages. Four others were killed and eight are believed to still be in rebel hands.