KIDNAPPING OF 10 IN ECUADOR SEEN AS WARNING FROM COLOMBIAN REBELS

BUENOS AIRES Members of Colombia's largest guerrilla group kidnapped five
American and five other foreign oil workers Thursday in an Amazon region of
Ecuador and hijacked a helicopter to take them across the Colombian border
into territory they control, according to the Ecuadoran government.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, know as FARC, has increasingly
operated across Colombia's borders in recent months. But Thursday's
kidnapping was the most brazen effort yet in what appears to be a campaign
to instill fear in Colombia's neighbors that a planned, U.S.-backed
offensive in southern Colombia in the coming months will spread the conflict.

The kidnapping came just hours before Colombian President Andres Pastrana
arrived in Argentina as part of his South American tour designed to boost
regional support for his efforts to use greater military power to force two
guerrilla groups to make concessions in Colombian peace talks. It also
seemed to bolster recent rebel claims that U.S. military officials coming
to train Colombian troops could be expected to be targets in coming months.

"The FARC has claimed responsibility for the hostage-taking in retaliation
for Plan Colombia," Ecuador's Vice President Pedro Pinto said, referring to
a $7.5 billion Colombian anti-drug plan that includes 60 U.S. military
helicopters plus training of a new Colombian army brigade to help eradicate
coca fields in two southern Colombian provinces occupied by FARC. The plan
also is financed by European governments and some international agencies.

"The FARC dress like civilians and cross the border and do things like
this," Pinto said.

Pinto told local radio that the Colombian guerrillas captured 11 hostages,
including two French, an Argentine, a Chilean, a New Zealander and one
Ecuadoran, at 4 a.m. local time near the town of Pompeya and then whisked
them away in a helicopter owned by an Ecuadoran service company.

The hostages work for two local service companies contracted by Repsol-YPF,
a Spanish-Argentine oil company, to perform geological surveys.

A State Department official confirmed that the Ecuadoran oil worker was
quickly released by the rebels.

"We don't know much," the official said.

"They were put in a helicopter--one of the captives is a pilot--and flown
away, and we don't know where, but it is likely they took them to Colombia."

The State Department official declined to name the hostages.

The kidnapping took place 47 miles south of the Ecuador-Colombia border,
suggesting that the rebels have the capacity to operate deep inside Ecuador.

Spokesmen at Repsol-YPF in Buenos Aires said they were trying to confirm
the reports.

U.S. military officials recently warned that the FARC has made contact with
and has influenced an Indian movement in Ecuador that helped overthrow a
democratically elected president in Quito earlier this year.

Ecuador borders areas of Colombia with some of the highest concentrations
of coca fields anywhere in South America, including the province of
Putumayo, which American and Colombian military officials plan to target
for extensive eradication of fields there in the coming months. The
officials hope that eradicating the coca in Putumayo and adjacent Caqueta
province will deny the FARC valuable resources to fund their guerrilla efforts.

FARC, the strongest, oldest and richest guerrilla group in Latin America,
also makes a habit of kidnapping foreigners as well as Colombians to
extract ransoms. It has stepped up activities, attacking one police station
after another in the Colombian countryside, ever since the U.S. Congress
passed a $1.3 billion aid package four months ago.

FARC does not hold any other American hostages currently, although three
American missionaries taken hostage three years ago are missing and
believed to be dead.