Soviet-era Estonian farmers ordered to send potatoes to communist ally Cuba took advantage to stash love notes in the shipments, but never got an answer, a newspaper reported Friday.

"In the spring of 1961, our Soviet collective farm got an order to pack all the potatoes we had left and prepare them to be sent to Cuba," Hans Uba, who worked as an electrician at the time, was quoted as saying by the weekly Maaleht.

Interior Minister Marwan Charbel confirmed that two peopled killed by the Internal Security Forces Information Branch in the Bekaa valley on Tuesday were members of a network seeking to kidnap foreigners.

In remarks to al-Joumhouria newspaper published Wednesday, Charbel said the two men were dangerous outlaws that had previously escaped from several ISF operations carried out against them and had killed an ISF Intelligence Branch officer in the Bekaa town of Majdal Anjar several months ago.

Estonia has paid a 5 million dollar ransom to win the release of the seven Estonian tourists kidnapped in the Bekaa valley in March, the French publication Intelligence Online has reported.

Citing a source close to Lebanese intelligence, the publication said that the Estonians had been kidnapped by mistake, and that the real goal of the hostage-takers was to nab citizens of a Western country with large interests in the Middle East.

The seven Estonians who were kidnapped in Lebanon for four months revealed that they were held captive in Lebanon and Syria, reported the daily An Nahar on Saturday.

They told Agence France Presse during a press conference in the Estonian capital Tallinn: “We were held in three different secret locations by the eight terrorists, in both Lebanon and Syria. The big advantage was we were together, and that unity gave us the strength to believe we would see a happy end.”

The role that France played in the release of the kidnapped seven Estonians was on Friday seen as a diplomatic and intelligence success for Paris on its Independence Day.

A French and Estonian team that transported the men from al-Taybeh village to the French embassy in Beirut on Thursday took all the measures to free the tourists without any coordination with Lebanese authorities.

The Estonian government paid the kidnappers of the seven Estonian tourists 10 million euros to win their release, media reports said Friday.

Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet said Thursday that no force was used to free the hostages and that several countries and their respective intelligence services were involved in the operation.

Seven kidnapped Estonians were freed in Lebanon on Thursday, almost four months since armed men abducted them as they entered the country on a bicycle tour from neighboring Syria.

Later on Thursday, Military Investigative Judge Fadi Sawwan heard the testimonies of the seven men in his office at the Military Court in Beirut.

A video of seven Estonians kidnapped in Lebanon in March has been sent to their relatives, after two earlier videos were posted on the Internet, the Baltic nation's foreign ministry has said.

"A third video showing all seven Estonians kidnapped in Lebanon was sent to some relatives of the kidnapped via their email addresses three weeks ago," ministry spokeswoman Minna-Liina Lind told Agence France Presse on Friday.

More than 22,000 youngsters -- from China to Canada -- took to the stage as a single choir Friday in the small Baltic republic of Estonia, where music is seen as a bedrock of the national identity.

A total of 22,239 performers gave the opening performance of a three-day song and dance festival, tapping into an unbroken tradition stretching back almost 150 years, organisers said.

Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet said on Tuesday that Lebanese authorities had information indicating seven Estonian cyclists kidnapped three months ago in the Bekaa Valley were still alive.

"According to the information I got from Lebanon's president, the kidnapped Estonians are alive and work to free them continues," Paet told Estonia's Kuku radio from Beirut on Tuesday.