MOSCOW, Russia — Roberto Tovar, Costa Rican foreign minister, invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to visit Costa Rica and Central America Tuesday, according to the Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores y Culto. Tovar is currently in the country’s capital, Moscow, as part of a diplomatic trip.

Tovar along with the foreign ministers of fellow Rio Group members, Brazil and Peru, met with Putin Tuesday. The group discussed economic 
cooperation between Latin America and Russia as well as the current war in Iraq. Tovar also 

Allan Wagner, Peruvian foreign minister, said the Rio Group was keen to develop closer ties with Russia. 

Tovar said that Central America in the last 20 years was a region engulfed by war, but now is a place of peace with democratic governments. He said in the last 20 years the region has elevated its socioeconomic level.

Tovar also met with Carlos Castro, a Costa Rican soccer player currently playing for Russian team Rubin Kazan.

KEY WEST, Fla. — The U.S. and Cuban governments are exchanging angry comments after the second hijacking of a Cuban airliner to the United States in the span of two weeks. Cuba said U.S. immigration policy is encouraging the incidents, while the Bush administration said Cuban police should clamp down on airport security rather than political dissidents.

The two hijackings have further complicated a U.S.-Cuban relationship already close to an all-time low because of what officials here say is the most severe crackdown on dissent in Cuba in many years.

In the latest incident, a Cuban man who claimed to have two hand grenades commandeered a domestic airliner Monday night on a flight that originated at Cuba's southern Island of Youth.

The man demanded to be taken to Miami but was told there was insufficient fuel for the trip and the plane a Russian-made AN-24 turboprop with 46 passengers and crew went to its original destination, Havana, for refueling.

A tense 12-hour standoff ensued at the Havana airport. In an unusual move, Cuban authorities asked the chief of the U.S. diplomatic interests section in Havana, James Cason, to come to the airport, where he told the hijacker by radio he would be arrested and face prosecution for air piracy if he took the plane to the United States.

The man released 15 passengers in Havana but despite Cason's warning, he ordered the plane flown on to the United States where it landed here escorted by U.S. fighter planes. The hijacker was arrested by U.S. authorities and the remaining passengers and crewmembers were safely disembarked.

The incident was similar to a March 19 hijacking of an aging DC-Three Cuban plane diverted here. The six hijackers in that case were also arrested and are facing U.S. prosecution, while several passengers opted to remain in the United States under U.S. policy that allows Cubans reaching U.S. soil to stay and seek residency.
 

Embassy gives links
for kin in military

The U.S. Embassy here is informing Costa Ricans with family members serving in the U.S. Armed Forces how to learn of their family-member’s whereabouts.

The embassy sent out a press release Tuesday making the families of soldiers aware that the Army Family Liaison Office is there to help. The office can find information for a family about their relative’s situation in the Armed Forces.

The address of the office is: Army Family Liaison Office, Deputy Chief of Staff, G-1, 300, Army Pentagon, Washington, DC 20310-0300.

The office can also be contacted over the Web at: armyfamily.link@hqda.army.mil or  Linda.douglas@us.army.mil.

Popular play gets
second run here

A popular play  produced here last year has been scheduled for new performances at the Teatro Nacional after being out of theaters for months. One of the nights of the presentation will be for the benefit of an organization which helps fight the disease polio.

The adapted Philippe Minyana play "Inventarios" will begin showing Thursday for only three nights. The play won the Premio Ancora, an award presented by La Nacion, as the best theatrical production here for the years 2001-2002. 

Inventarios has not been seen on stage since December of 2002 and will now only show for three nights because of the high cost of production, according to Eugenia Cheverri, co-director. The production runs high costs because of the media technology used, she said.

Ms. Cheverri called the play a dark-comedy. It follows the stories of three old women who lived through war. The women are exploited emotionally by a television show in which they participate.
The play is a commentary and criticism of life, Ms. Cheverri said.

Ms. Chaverri and Jodi Steiger, co-director, combined their artistic talents and conceived a play that uses robotic lighting, movie projection and still photos. The players on stage interact with the images produced on screen behind them.

The directors had to rewrite the play in order to make it work better with the art that they introduced into the final product. They received permission from the playwright to alter the original story.

Minyana is a contemporary French playwright, and the play was translated into Spanish for this production.

Thursday night’s showing is for the benefit of PolioPlus, an interational charitable organization trying to eliminate Polio from the globe by 2005. The members of the Rotary Club of Rohromoser have sponsored that evening’s perfomance because PolioPlus is a Rotary International campaign. The play begins at 8 p.m. and all tickets are 5,000 colons.

Inventarios will also show on Friday and Saturday but not as a charitable event. The show starts those nights at 8 p.m. and tickets will range from 2,000 to 5,000 colons.

Tickets are on sale at the box office at the Teatro Nacional.

Autopsy planned
for unnamed victim

A decomposed body was found in a garbage can in the vicinity of a farm near the Parque de Diversiones Tuesday afternoon, said the Judicial Investigating Organization.

Officials said the body had the look of that of a male and that it was in a state of decomposition. The officials added that an autopsy was to be conducted to determine the cause of death and the identity of the body.

The government of Costa Rica is introducing a measure to reform its penal law regarding the abduction and murder of children.

The reform laws initiated by two members of the Asamblea Nacional would lengthen the maximum jail term imposed on those convicted of kidnapping or murder of a victim up to 25 years. The minimum sentence would be 18 years, according to a press release from the Costa Rican legislature.

The increased penalties would apply to any criminal who abducts a minor even if the minor goes willingly, according to the release. 

The reform will be reviewed by the Comisión Permanente de Asuntos Sociales, a government committee on social matters, before being made a law, the release said.

The measure is in response to two high profile kidnappings during the last year. In one the young female victim still is missing. A boy, the second victim, died a short time after being abducted.
 

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The top immigration official said a proposed rewrite of the law governing foreigners in Costa Rica has strong support in the Asamblea Nacional and is very likely to pass.

Marco Badilla Chavarría, director general of Migración y Extranjeria, said all political parties in the assembly support the measure, which is critical to national security.

He was joined in his assessment by Mario Rodríguez Barrantes, head of the Departamento de Residentes, Pensionados y Rentistas. Both met with reporters Tuesday.

Foreign residents here are interested in the law, in part, because the category of rentista would be eliminated. Many foreigners are here legally as rentistas, which requires the posting of some $60,000 in a bank for five years. The requirements are different than that for pensionado which requires a legitimate pension from an outside source of at least $600 a month.

Badilla said that foreign residents should not be anxious about the changes because those already here will have an opportunity to select other permanent residency categories and be given adequate time to complete the process, assuming that the law passes.

Badilla strongly supports the legal change and called the 32-year-old rentista category obsolete. At the time the category was created, the $1,000 a month that rentistas promised to inject into the Costa Rican economy was a much more substantial amount of money, he noted.

He strongly favors the proposed legislation for other reasons that do not directly affect foreign expat residents here or potential residents. Among other changes, the proposed law makes illegal the practice of helping aliens enter the country illegally. These are the so-called coyotes who are principally involved in the transport of Panamanian and Nicaraguan citizens.

The new law also would extend the period from two years to five years that a new foreign resident would have to wait before being allowed to become a permanent resident.

The proposed legislation also creates many new categories under which persons can enter Costa Rica legally, said Badilla. New categories would cover artistic and creative performers and sports team members, for example. 

The pensionado category is retained, but the proposed legislation also puts the pensionado category firmly under the control of Migración instead of the Instituto Costarricense de Turismo, where it is now. 

And the new law would clarify the status of the immigration police, which is the topic of a Sala IV constitutional court case. The proposed law clearly specifies that these immigration officers have full police powers.

The legislative proposal went to a committee of the assembly Feb. 19. The committee will study the measure and made suggestions to the full assembly.

Although Badilla did not address the point, Costa Rican officials are concerned by the influx of citizens with low economic status. In addition, officials are concerned by the arrival of unsavory characters who frequently use the minimal requirements of the rentista category to secure a 

legal right to stay here. A deposit of $60,000 is not a barrier to persons involved in illegal activities.

Costa Rican officials want most foreigners who seek to live here to apply for their legal status at Costa Rican consulates in their home countries. Because rentista and pensionado were covered by a tourism law, officials found they could not enforce this requirement for these categories.

How foreigners 
can stay out of jail

Marco Badilla Chavarría, the director general of Migración y Extranjeria, has been initiating sweeps by police and immigration officials through San José’s downtown, beach communities and other areas likely to have substantial numbers of foreign residents, some illegal.

More than 500 persons have been detained in such sweeps since Christmas, including some tourists.

Badilla said he encourages foreigners to leave their passports in a secure place but to carry a photocopy of the passport face page and the page showing the arrival stamp placed by Costa Rican officials when the foreigner entered the country.

Tourists have 90 days to enjoy Costa Rica before they have to leave.

Such photocopies will be accepted by immigration agents, Badilla said, but to improve their chances foreigners ought to go one step further. They should have the photocopies certified by a notary, a lawyer, as being a true copy of what the passport contains. The notary also applies stamps. 

Some foreigners who are illegal try to trick immigration officials by using the photocopy of someone else’s arrival stamp. The stamp and the identification information are on separate pages in most passports.

Immigration officials have easy access to computerized records, including those from the International Police Agency (INTERPOL), to double-check the legality of those they stop. But a certified photocopy can speed up the process, Badilla said.

This newspaper seeks the prompt return of two men who ran high-interest investment operations that have gone out of business.

Luis Enrique Villalobos Camacho, 62, was associated with Ofinter S.A., a money exchange house, and with his own private investment business that had about $1 billion in other people’s money on the books.

Villalobos closed his business Oct. 14 and vanished.

Louis Milanes operated Savings Unlimited and several casinos in San José. He left the country with other members of his firm the weekend of Nov. 23. He may have as much as $260 million in his possession. Both operations catered to North Americans.

Villalobos and Milanes are the subjects of international arrest warrants.  Associates of both men have been jailed.

A.M. Costa Rica has posted a $500 reward for information leading to the detention of either man with the hopes that others will make similar pledges. The newspaper believes that investors only will see some of their money when the two men are in custody.

Milanes has few supporters in San José. On the other hand, as the letters frequently on this page show, Villalobos still has supporters who believe that he will reappear and settle his debts. They believe he is in hiding because of a predatory Costa Rican government.