Libya is the winner in the four-month hostage crisis in southern Philippines, which started ending with the release of five more Western captives. By brokering a deal to win the release of 21 hostages held by Filipino-Muslim extremists, Libya has taken another step to change its international image as a rogue state and to earn the goodwill of European nations.

Analysts said Tripoli's active role in helping solve the protracted kidnap drama was an attempt to end the isolation imposed after the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jetliner over Lockerbie, Scotland.. They said Libya needed Europe's support to persuade the USA to lift unilateral sanctions.

But it remains to be seen whether Libya's mediation efforts signal the rehabilitation of a government linked to terrorism and brutality until recently. Despite recent overtures by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, there are concerns that he continues to orchestrate unrest, particularly in Africa.

While Libyan officials deny a hidden agenda behind its assistance to the Philippines, they have made sure the world knows whom to credit. A Libyan man raised a huge laminated portrait of Colonel Gaddafi as photographers and TV cameramen mobbed the freed Westerners as they arrived in the southern city of Zamboanga. They are on their way to Tripoli, to thank Col Gaddafi. Four of them - French nationals Sonia Wendling and Marie Michel Moarbes, South African Monique Strydom and German Werner Wallert - were kidnapped on 23 April, while va-cationing at a Malaysian diving resort and brought by boat to Jolo.

The fifth, Mar-yse Burgot, was seized with two other French TV journalists in July, when they visited the rebel camp. A foundation headed by Col Gaddafi's son has reportedly bankrolled a deal, estimated to be worth about $40 million, for the release of the hostages. Its point man is former Libyan ambassador to the Philippines, Rajab Azzarouq, a confidant of the Libyan leader. The Filipino government, which initially rejected offers of foreign assistance, seized Libya's offer in May, amid mounting international pressure to resolve the crisis. Libya has mediated between Muslim separatist guerrillas and the government over the years and helped build schools and mosques in the southern part of the country, home to an estimated five-million Muslims. But Libya has also been accused of training fighters of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the larger of two secessionist groups waging a guerrilla war against the government. Despite signs, the hostage crisis is winding down, it is uncertain whether the identities of the Abu Sayyaf groups's accomplices will be known and whether the government can put the kidnap menace to an end. Press reports, quoting some Philippine officials, claimed some Malaysian businessmen and a Malaysian general had financed and facilitated the cross-border raid but no concrete evidence has so far been offered to support the allegations. The abduction has reaped cash and propaganda for Abu Sayyaf, a ragtag band of about 1,000 guerrillas, before the kidnap crisis. Ransom payments, estimated to have reached $30 million so far, have promptly gone into firepower and new recruits.

- The Straits Times/Asia News Network