ATHENS -- A Greek newspaper published on Wednesday what could be the first statement from deadly November 17 guerrillas since a series of arrests, in which they threatened to take hostages to swap for captured comrades.

Police said they were checking whether the letter was a hoax or a genuine communiqué from the radical leftists, Reuters reported.

It came a day after the band's suspected leader and 10 other members were jailed while awaiting trial for 23 murders, including U.S., British and Turkish diplomats, since 1975.

"We will wait for their fair trial. But if it is even slightly reminiscent of (Greece's 1967-74 military) junta-style trials, future targets will be taken with one more aim: The exchange of prisoners," said the letter published by the liberal daily ***Eleftherotypia. *** ***Eleftherotypia ***has received communiqués from the guerrillas in the past, using the same method of delivery.

"The five-page letter was found in a garbage bin following an anonymous telephone call to our offices," said ***Eleftherotypia *** editor Vangelis Panagopoulos.

The group said recent arrests had hurt its "inner circle"' but vowed to fight on against capitalism and the United States.

"We have lost many comrades. We cannot deny that.

We have lost a large part of our 'family'," the letter said.

After more than a quarter of a century of failed efforts, police in the past month have arrested 14 November 17 suspects and vowed to end its reign of terror ahead of the 2004 Athens Olympics.

------------ Alive and Kicking ------------------------- The letter from the group, which emerged in 1975 with the killing of CIA station chief Richard Welch, said the capture of its guerrillas would not divert members from their main aims.

"This changes our course a bit but it does not cancel anything. It just postpones. We are still alive," said the letter, which bore November 17's trademark red star.

Police made their breakthrough in hunting down the band on June 30 when a bomb exploded prematurely in the hands of an arrested suspect who revealed names of other members.

Savas Xiros, an icon painter, told police his failed bomb attack on a ferry operator at Athens Piraeus port was to have been the start of a new offensive.

Its main targets were to have been the Olympics and Greece's six-month presidency of the Europoean Union at the start of next year.

The group's most recent victim was British defense attache brigadier Stephen Saunders, who was shot dead in his car in June 2000.

In Wednesday's letter, the group rejected suggestions it had shot Saunders by mistake, confusing him with another man. It had said Saunders was killed because of his involvement in NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia in 1999. "No, there was no mistake," it said. "This specific Saunders was responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians."

November 17, named for the day in 1973 when student protests against a then-ruling military junta were brutally crushed, has also killed two Turkish diplomats and five Americans as well as a number of Greek politicians, police and industrialists.

It has carried out scores of bank robberies, bomb blasts and rocket attacks.

Until the past month's roundup, no member of the group had been arrested or identified.