Austria kidnap woman pities captor one year on

VIENNA, Aug 20 (Reuters) A year after escaping a kidnapper who held her for eight years, Austria's Natascha Kampusch says she feels increasingly sorry for her captor and has trouble defining friendship.

Snatched as a freckle-faced 10-year-old on her way to school, Kampusch was forced to live in a cell beneath a house garage from 1998 until her dramatic escape in August 2006, which turned her into an international media sensation. Her 44-year-old captor committed suicide after she fled.

''It was always clear that there could be only one of us two, and in the end that turned out to be me, not him,'' Kampusch, 19, said in excerpts of an interview published on the Web site of broadcaster ORF and to be aired tonight.

''I felt a little bit of regret, of pity,'' she said. ''All I can say is that I feel more and more sorry for him.'' Kampusch spent most of her teenage years in the tiny, windowless cell and only made her escape when her kidnapper, Wolfgang Priklopil, was distracted by a phone call as she was cleaning his car in the driveway of his home.

''There are many people who abuse one's trust, and this is very grave,'' said Kampusch.

''I haven't quite found out for myself how to define friendship.'' The story of her dash to freedom, but also her relationship to Priklopil, with whom she occasionally went shopping and skiing, held media audiences spellbound around the globe.

''What he did to me has become more distant, (but) it does not fade away, it boils up again and again,'' said Kampusch.

''I just try and handle these memories as well as I can, and try to work through them.'' EMOTIONAL CONCERNS Kampusch has been busy catching up on her education, learning how to drive and reintegrating in society. She stresses the importance of privacy for emotional issues.

''You will rarely, or even never, see me crying, sobbing or breaking down in public. I'll sort that out in private,'' she said.

Kampusch explained why she bade farewell to Priklopil's coffin after his suicide.

''I said farewell, and why shouldn't I have done so? ''It was important to me, because the last time I saw him alive was when he turned his back to me and I ran away head over heels, but I only said farewell to his coffin, I didn't actually see him,'' she told ORF.

After her escape, Kampusch found herself chased by photographers and journalists and has received offers for film and book rights from Austria and abroad.

Kampusch's mother, who is divorced from her father, launched an emotional book about her own eight years without Natascha earlier this month.

But so far Kampusch, who flew to Spain for the ORF television special and spent the first day of her trip at the seaside, has given only a small number of interviews.

She has shielded herself behind an army of psychiatrists, media advisers and lawyers marketing and handling her case.

Reuters CS VP0110