Chávez to talk to press about FARC hostages

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Radio Netherlands

Chávez to talk to press about FARC hostages
Published: Tuesday 25 December 2007 19:39 UTC
Last updated: Tuesday 25 December 2007 21:23 UTC

Caracas (25 December) - The three hostages who were due to be released by the Colombian guerrilla movement FARC are still in captivity. FARC announced the hostages' imminent release last week, and it was hoped that they would be freed before Christmas.

The hostages in question are politician Clara Rojas, her son Emmanuel and a former MP, Consuelo Gonzalez de Perdomo. They belong to a group of 45 prominent hostages that the FARC wants to exchange for around 500 jailed members.

On Tuesday, Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez, who is mediating in the exchange, announced that he would give a press conference about the delay on Wednesday. The FARC have agreed to hand the hostages over to Mr Chávez or one of his representatives.

Read more: http://www.radionetherlands.nl/news/international/5574656/Chvez-to-talk-to-press-about-FARC-hostages

[Judi Lynn]

1. Colombia Senator Says Hostage Release Still Planned, AFP Says

Colombia Senator Says Hostage Release Still Planned, AFP Says

By Matthew Walter

Dec. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Colombian Senator Piedad Cordoba, who has helped mediate a hostage release with the country's biggest guerrilla group, said she still expects the release of three prisoners at any moment, Agence France-Presse reported.

The release of hostages Clara Rojas and her son Emmanual, who was born in captivity, and Colombian lawmaker Consuelo Gonzales de Perdomo is ``certain and will happen,'' Cordoba told AFP. Family members had been hoping for their release by yesterday, Christmas Eve, the news service said.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia said a week ago they would release the hostages, who are part of a group of 45 that have been the focus of negotiations with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, AFP reported.

The plan is to release them to socialist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who was helping negotiate with the Marxist group for a swap of hostages for about 500 jailed guerrillas until Uribe ordered him to stop last month. Chavez returned to Venezuela Dec. 23 from a trip to Cuba, and is expected to be in a residence near the Colombian border today to work out details of how to receive the hostages, AFP said.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=aQsXH5OF2MvY&refer=latin_america

[Peace Patriot]

2. Colombian Pres. Uribe (no doubt kneecapped by the Bush Junta), nearly

sabotaged these negotiations (just prior to the 12/2/07 constitutional referendum in Venezuela), by firing Chavez as negotiator, using a lame excuse, just as Chavez made progress on "proof of life." Uribe's government ARRESTED the 3 FARC negotiators while they were in transit to Caracas with the "proof of life" documentation, and then tried to take credit for obtaining the "proof of life" but were immediately contradicted by the hostages' families, and many others, including the Pres. of France, who credited Chavez and asked him to continue.

I suspect that there was even worse sabotage planned--murders, assassinations--and when that plot got foiled, Uribe, Donald Rumsfeld and the Bushites got pissed, tried to salvage some P.R. points by making it look like Chavez's fault, and of course abandoned the hostages, whom they never gave a fuck for anyway(just pawns in their ugly fascist games). Rumsfeld published an op-ed in the WaPo 12/1/07, basically declaring war on Venezuela, dissing Chavez for this negotiation with FARC, and OMITTING the fact that Uribe invited Chavez to negotiate, in the first place. The timing and content of Rumsfeld's tirade tells us what was likely going on with all this.

So, there are likely some serious security issues around release of these hostages. That's probably the reason for the delay. You have the Bush Junta wanting it to go badly--and more than likely feverishly spying and trying to insert covert operatives into the situation. You have the rightwing paramilitaries in Colombia (and in Venezuelan border areas), already stirring up trouble and ready to stir up more in cahoots with the violent rightwing political forces in Venezuela and Bolivia, and the corrupt, fascist Uribe government itself and its military--fat with billions of U.S. tax dollars filtered through Bushite fingers, for whom FARC is a meal ticket to yet more booty from Washington.

A dicey situation, to say the least--and fraught with danger for people of good will. On the other hand, there are a lot of government leaders in South America who are allies of the Chavez government--Argentina, for instance, whose new president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, pledged Argentina's help in the hostages release in her inaugural speech a few days ago, and others, like Evo Morales in Bolivia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador and Lula da Silva in Brazil, as well the support, help and hope for the hostage release by the government of France and others. Living in the U.S. under the Bush Junta, we forget that there are good leaders elsewhere, and we also don't realize how many Bushite plots have been foiled--in South America, in particular, by these new leftist leaders having each other's backs.

I hope and pray that all goes well--and that this first hostage release will lead to others, and to the end of the 30-year civil war in Colombia, and the end of the U.S. war on the poor in South America.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Beautiful imagery with the FARC as Uribe's mealticket. The best! Truthful, too. Without the "enemy,"

he's just another face in the crowd.

Someone should point out to Uribe that he can still be the first President in Colombia to have the three terms he wants if he sells them on the idea they need him to help steer the country into peaceful waters, if they can wind down this "war" on whomever they claim to be fighting, and still keep a ton of foreign aid, just redirect to other functions in Colombia, or to be shoveled on in to his administration to be labeled as going to different applications.

Retraining a fascist for peace: is it possible without killing anyone who would look sideways at him?

Hoping he starts feeling the deep shift in Latin America in the countries which have born the heavy impact of hideous abuse of power from the US supported right-wing dictators and juntas. Hope he reads what's in the wind and starts winding down his own aggression against the poor: those people need help, as pointed out by world organizations desperate to see aid coming for the people driven off their lands, living dispossed, some hiding in other countries, all lost souls, and so very many lost to mass slaughter, horrors beyond horrors, already at the hands of his own military sometimes even working to back up the death squads. It all needs to end.