January 1, 2008 Hostage Release Off,
Colombian Terrorists Blame Army
Villavicencio (Colombia)
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) has postponed the
hostage release claiming that the country's military activity had
made it impossible to safely release the captives, EFE news agency
reported Tuesday.
The new date for the release was not announced.
In a statement read to reporters by former Argentine President
Nestor Kirchner, the delegates who were supposed to witness the
handover of the hostages said they would return to Colombia once
conditions were in place to assure the success of the mission.
Kirchner spoke after delegates from Bolivia, Brazil, Cuba, Ecuador,
France and Switzerland had already departed Villavicencio aboard the
four Venezuelan airplanes that brought them here last Friday.
The statement called on the FARC rebels to desist from military
"actions" during the period designated for the handover.
President Alvaro Uribe has requested to create a "humanitarian
space" free of troops so that the rebels can move the captives to a
designated release site.
Uribe said his government would create a corridor "without active
military presence" to allow the rebels to hand over the three
hostages.
On behalf of the delegates, Kirchner extended thanks to Uribe, the
International Committee of the Red Cross and Venezuelan President
Hugo Chavez, who was the architect of the release plan.
"We have just accepted in front of the humanitarian delegates and
the foreign minister of Venezuela that a corridor will be created to
facilitate the FARC transfer of the captives," Kirchner told the
media at the Apiay airbase in Villavicencio, south of Bogota.
He said FARC leaders were "lying" when they told Chavez that
Colombian military activity had forced them to postpone the
handover.
"To insist now would be to put in danger" the lives of the captives
and of the guerrillas charged with delivering them to a delegation
of Red Cross personnel and foreign dignitaries, the FARC said in the
message that Chavez read over Venezuelan state television shortly
before Uribe faced reporters in Villavicencio.
Uribe, who arrived here Monday, called the FARC's letter a "cynical
terrorist response" and said his government had done everything
necessary to accommodate Chavez's plan for the hostage release.
The president said his administration has been giving all necessary
security guarantees and pledged Colombian soldiers "will not fire a
single shot" once the Venezuelan helicopters took off from
Villavicencio for the designated site for the FARC's hostage
handover.
The release of former Colombian vice presidential candidate Clara
Rojas, the son she bore in captivity and former Congresswoman
Consuelo Gonzalez de Perdomo has been expected for several days now.
According to the plan, the choppers were to take off for one or more
locations designated by the FARC, using coordinates supplied by the
rebels to the Venezuelan government and then relayed to the Red
Cross crews.
Uribe said in a press conference, the real reason the FARC had not
released the captives was the guerrillas no longer had Emmanuel
Rojas in their possession.
He said a boy matching Rojas' description was in a Bogota facility
run by a government welfare agency and that DNA tests were in
progress to determine if the youngster was indeed Emmanuel.
"As soon as we find a place that gives us complete confidence of
safety we will be communicating with you to reactivate the
mechanisms" for the hostage release, FARC told Chavez.
Clara Rojas was the 2002 running mate of the FARC's most famous
hostage, Ingrid Betancourt, who because she holds dual
French-Colombian citizenship has become a cause celebre in Europe.
Betancourt and Rojas were kidnapped while on the campaign trail Feb
23, 2002, while Gonzalez was captured Sep 10, 2001.
Betancourt's daughter Melanie Delloye said in Paris Sunday she was
closely monitoring the hostage-release operation and believed it
would give "a push" to efforts to win the freedom of the other
hostages being held by the FARC.
Among the other high-value hostages deemed "exchangeable" by the
FARC are three US military contractors. The rebel group has held
some of the captives for as long as 10 years.
The FARC wants to swap the so-called "exchangeables" for hundreds of
jailed rebels, including some of its members who have already been
extradited to the US, two of whom have already been convicted on
drug and other offences in the US courts.
The FARC has an estimated 20,000 fighters under the command of the
group's septuagenarian founder, Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda.
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