Villavicencio (Colombia), Jan 1 (IANS) 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.