Southwestern Announces Sampling Results From Josnitoro Project, Peru: Financial News

Southwestern Announces Sampling Results From Josnitoro Project, Peru
Monday March 16, 2009 8:00 am ET

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(MARKET WIRE)--Mar 16, 2009 -- Southwestern Resources Corp. (Toronto:SWG.TO - News) ("Southwestern" or the "Company") announces encouraging geochemical and geological results from its 100% owned, 8,000 hectare Josnitoro project, located 65 kilometres southwest of Abancay in southern Peru. The Company is re-evaluating this project, which has resulted in a new interpretation of the geology and exploration potential, with several new, potentially significant, targets identified.

Josnitoro comprises two geologically distinct zones. The first is a large east-west zone measuring four by one kilometres which contains multiple copper-gold skarn bodies, related to multi-phase intrusives cutting limestone and quartzite. The second is a quartzite-hosted oxide gold zone, measuring 1.5 x 1.0 kilometres and is located two kilometres west of the skarn zone.

The skarn zone is composed of at least four areas of chalcopyrite-magnetite-garnet skarn bodies, with the largest area measuring 600 x 250 metres in area and 150 metres in thickness. Southwestern collected 17 rock chip samples from the skarn zone and the results are below:

 

                            Assay
                  Copper                  Gold
Sample No.      (percent)     (grams per tonne)
----------------------------------------------
69907               8.98                  2.58
69911               7.90                  9.33
69921               7.79                  1.78
69908               7.54                  1.86
69920               7.44                  4.11
69919               3.07                  0.57
69913               3.04                  2.33
69918               3.00                  0.43
69904               2.96                  1.42
69915               2.74                  0.05
69917               2.26                  0.01
69912               1.28                  2.95
69910               0.98                  0.02
69909               0.78                  0.26
69922               0.75                  0.10
69905               0.54                  0.18
69916               0.51                 0.002

Previous field work on the skarn zone included 59 rock chip samples, with 16 of the samples containing over 0.30% copper and seven of those containing over 0.70% copper. Three of the samples contain from 1.0 to 10.7 grams per tonne gold.

The gold zone is composed of multiple exposures of intensely fractured quartzite and parallel, sub-horizontal, shear-zones with iron-oxides and abundant coarse gold. From 892 previous rock chip samples from the gold zone, 116 samples contain from 0.30 to 33.60 grams per tonne gold, with 46 of those containing greater than 1.0 gram per tonne gold. Three samples were recently collected from these exposures, of which two returned 0.30 and 0.83 grams per tonne gold. The previous sampling was limited in exploration scope, as it was carried out before some of the key alteration exposures were uncovered. The newly recognized gold zone is open in all directions with the surrounding area covered by thin soil and vegetation. The mineralized exposures suggest that the zone could be at least 50 metres thick.

The company is continuing the re-evaluation of this project and is planning detailed mapping, additional sampling and geophysical surveying to advance the various targets to drill-stage.

Quality Control

Southwestern sends samples to the ALS Chemex laboratory in Lima, Peru, an ISO 9001 and 17025 registered laboratory. Southwestern's quality control and quality assessment procedures include the analysis of its own blanks, standards and duplicates, introduced among the batches of samples, in addition to those used by the laboratory for its routine testing. Rock and drill samples are crushed to greater than 70% passing 10 mesh, and pulverized to greater than 85% passing 200 mesh. A fraction of the pulps is analyzed for gold by fire assay and AAS. Another fraction of the pulps is digested in aqua regia acid and is analyzed for 34 elements by ICP-AES with Quantitative Low Detection Mercury by AAS.

Qualified Person

Alejandro Losada-Calderon, Vice-President Exploration of Southwestern, is the qualified person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 for the Company and has verified the data contained in this news release.

About Southwestern

Southwestern is a Vancouver-based mineral exploration company engaged in the identification, acquisition, evaluation and exploration of gold, silver and base metals mineral properties. The Company has a number of significant projects, including the Liam gold-silver project in Peru. Southwestern is a reporting issuer in British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, and Ontario and trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol SWG.

Forward-looking Statements

Statements in this news release that are forward-looking statements are based on the current expectations, beliefs, assumptions, estimates and forecasts about the Company's business and the industry and markets in which it operates. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions which are difficult to predict. Therefore, actual outcomes and results may differ materially from what is expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements due to a number of factors, including but not limited to, the Company's access to additional capital to fund future activities, the loss of mineral properties or the inability to obtain mining licenses, the inherently risky nature of the Company's activities and its lack of experience in bringing an exploration property into production, its ability to repatriate any earnings, foreign exchange fluctuations, the political stability and economic uncertainty of those areas in which the Company carries on operations and the lack of infrastructure in those areas, title risks, the risks and uncertainties associated with joint ventures and the Company's reliance on third parties, statutory and regulatory compliance, the adequacy and availability of insurance coverage, the Company's dependence upon employees and consultants and fluctuations in mineral prices and other risks detailed in the Company's filings with the Canadian Securities Authorities.

These risks, as well as others, could cause actual results and events to vary significantly. The Company expressly disclaims any intent or obligation to update these forward-looking statements, unless the Company specifically states otherwise.