By IANS
Cienfuegos (Cuba) : Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has said he has already worked out a formula for receiving three hostages being freed by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas.
“I’ve already come up with a formula to receive them,” Chavez told reporters Friday after the conclusion of Caribbean oil summit here, Spain’s EFE news agency reported.
He said the hand over of the hostages is “a delicate operation because there are groups in Colombia, some close to the government or from the government itself, that are going to try to avoid the successful release” of the captives.
The FARC announced Dec 18 that it was prepared to release Clara Rojas, formerly the running mate of the most famous hostage Ingrid Betancourt, her son and former congresswoman Consuelo Gonzalez de Perdomo.
Chavez and Colombian opposition senator Piedad Cordoba had been authorized by Colombian President Alvaro Uribe in August as mediators in a potential hostage-for-prisoner swap.
Uribe pulled the plug on their efforts last month, alleging a breach of the ground rules, sparking a diplomatic row between the two neighbouring countries.
“We’ll achieve (the release of the three captives) with a lot of faith” and “then we’ll continue trying to free the rest and advance toward a peace process, but of course there’s little we can do. That depends on (political) will, and in Colombia there’s no (political) will.”
The Colombian government and the FARC have said for the past five years that they are willing to pursue a hostage-for-prisoner swap.
But they have never sat down to negotiate because the rebels demand the demilitarisation of two towns in the southwest Columbia, and Uribe, whose popularity is largely based on bringing greater security, has long rejected that possibility.