Wolfers to Renew Efforts to Obtain Release of Men Held by Rebels

By Peter Kihss
Special to The New York Times

GUANTANAMO BASE, Cuba, July 4--Park Fields Wollam Jr., United States Consul in Santiago, returned here this evening.  He had been in Havana conferring with Earl E. T. Smith, United States Ambassador, on the continued detention of Americans by the Cuban rebels.

A spokesman said Mr. Wollam intended to "resume contacts with the rebel forces" but declined to elaborate.

Mr. Wollam had negotiated with Raul Castro, a rebel leader, in the mountains of eastern Oriente Province from last Saturday until Wednesday when he emerged with four liberated United States civilians and one Canadian.

Read Admiral Robert B. Ellis, commander of the naval base here, said he did not know when the rest of the United States and Canadian nationals would be released.

The Forth of July did not become the hoped for "Independence Day" for the thirty United States service men and fifteen United States and Canadian civilians still held by the Cuban rebels.

Today also was the thirty-fourth birthday of Billy Ray Fox of Bloomfield, N.J., a Navy man who was kidnapped by the rebels on his way home from a party he had attended at the insistence of his wife.

At the Ermita sugar mills, ten miles west of Guantanamo City, it was reported that Daymond F. Elmore, 53 years old, of Haynesville, La., one of the civilians kidnapped, was suffering from trachoma, an eye disease.  He was said to need daily treatments.

Speculation had been that rebels, led by Fidel Castro and his brother, Raul, might consider United States Independence Day a symbolic occasion for freeing the men.

But monitoring of the rebel radio the last two days by United States reporters brought no word of the kidnappers.  Only one broadcast was picked up, relayed by the Radio Continente in Caracas, Venezuela, which identified itself as part of the Fidel Castro Freedom Network.

Heard just before 11 o'clock last night, this was a recorded broadcast to the International Red Cross, referring to an earlier broadcast Monday about thirty Cuban Army soldiers alleged to have been wounded.  The Monday broadcast had asserted that twenty-six Cuban Army soldiers had been killed in a battle in the Estrada Palma area of the Sierra Maestra and said the wounded had been left in specified locations for rescue.

Last night's broadcast said the appeal had been ignored for seventy-two hours and charged that President Fulgencio Batista "does not allow medicines to be moved into rebel territory."

The Venezuelan station noted the release of five North Americans and denied there had been any kidnapping.  It said the incident was "only a tour" to show the devastation caused by Cuban forces using United States arms against the rebels.

HAVANA, July 4 - No information has been released by the United States Embassy here concerning the progress of negotiations to free the remaining kidnapped persons. The Embassy says only that Ambassador Earl E. T. Smith is conferring with the State Department in Washington on the matter.
 
A reliable source said today a message had been received from the four technicians kidnapped from the United Fruit Company properties near their Preston surgar mill. The message said that all four were well.