Man takes hostage at Russian Embassy in Costa Rica

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica, May 12 (Reuters) An armed man from the former Soviet Union was holding one person hostage at the Russian Embassy in Costa Rica in a personal dispute.

Police cordoned off the embassy, at a three-floor apartment building in the center of the capital, but no employees were in danger, the Russian ambassador, Valery Nikolayenko said yesterday.

The man's mother was also in the building, trying to talk her son into giving himself up, Costa Rica's government said.

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 ambassador chose to remain in the building in a safe area on a separate floor to try to sort out the crisis, apparently a dispute over money or visa paperwork.

''We are managing the situation, which consists of two people,'' Nikolayenko told Costa Rican television. ''We are trying to get them out in a non-violent way.'' 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 gun, 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.

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