Hostage-taker surrenders at Russia Embassy in C.Rica

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica, May 12 (Reuters) An armed man from the former Soviet Union took at least one person hostage for four hours at the Russian Embassy in Costa Rica before surrendering to police.

''It all ended without violence, without loss of life. All the embassy staff are just fine,'' said Ambassador Valery Nikolayenko, who stayed in a separate floor of the building talking to police and the media as police cordoned off the embassy yesterday.

The hostage taker was a 21-year-old man from Kazakhstan, immigration authorities said, but Costa Rican television said he might be from Uzbekistan.

The man took another visitor to the embassy hostage because of a dispute over money, the ambassador said.

The hostage-taker's mother was in the three-floor building throughout the four-hour incident, trying to persuade him to give up.

Police led at least three people out of an embassy back door toward another building shortly after the stand-off began.

In Moscow, the Russian news agency Itar-Tass said the incident stemmed from an argument between two visitors during which one of them drew a gun.

The agency, citing employees of the Russian Embassy in San Jose, said the visitors were in the consular section of the building and when one of them drew a weapon, the other visitor took cover in the consulate's reception room.

Costa Rica has long been considered the most stable country in Central America and is a popular tourist destination.

But, in a hostage crisis in July 2004, a Costa Rican policeman shot and killed three people inside the Chilean Embassy and then turned the gun on himself after learning he was to lose his job protecting the embassy. Seven other hostages escaped death by locking themselves in a room.

Reuters HK VP0620