Hopes fading for Latin American climber lost in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, July 22 (Reuters) Hopes are fading of finding alive one of Latin America's leading climbers after he went missing 10 days ago on Nanga Parbat, the world's ninth highest peak, Pakistani rescuers said today.

Jose Antonio Delgado, a 41-year-old Venezuelan, became stranded in bad weather at a height of 7,400 metres during his ascent of ''The Killer Mountain'', as Nanga Parbat is otherwise known.

''Our team of six rescuers reached the base where Delgado was last heard from. They didn't find him. We don't have much hope now,'' Lt. Colonel Manzoor Hussain, of the Pakistan Mountaineering and Climbing Federation, told Reuters.

''It is very difficult to survive at that altitude in such harsh weather for more than a week now,'' he added.

Delgado is one of the most successful Latin American climbers of all time and summited Mount Everest in 2001.

His wife Freda Ayala has come to the Pakistani capital of Islamabad and is holding out hopes that her husband will be found alive.

''They are still searching for him. They have also sent in helicopters now as the weather has cleared,'' she said.

Manzoor said the search would continue as the weather was clear. ''We are looking at other base camps also as he might have tried to descend.'' Nanga Parbat, 8,126 metres high and at the western end of the Himalayas, was first conquered by German Buhl, of Germany, in 1953 after 31 people died attempting it.

Since then more have died on its slopes and the toll is now 47, far fewer than Everest, but fewer people try to climb Nanga Parbat, which is regarded as technically one of the most difficult mountains to climb.

REUTERS SRS DS1400