By Xinhua,
Caracus : Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Sunday urged the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to unilaterally free all its hostages and end the decades of armed conflict in Colombia.
Nothing justified the presence of armed movements in Latin America, Chavez said at a diplomatic gathering in the northwest state of Falcon attended by Chinese and Iranian ambassadors to Venezuela.
“At this point a guerilla movement is out of place in Latin America,” Chavez said, adding that it was time for FARC to free all the hostages they keep in Colombia’s mountains.
“It would be a great humanitarian gesture in exchange for nothing,” Chavez said.
“FARC should know that it has become an excuse for the United States to threaten all Latin America, and FARC provides the perfect excuse for saying there are terrorist groups in Latin America,” he said.
The Venezuelan president said that an eventual release of the hostages would be the first step to ending internal violence and creating the conditions for a peace process in Colombia.
He urged the new FARC commander “Alfonso Cano” who replaced founder Manuel Marulanda after he died from a heart attack on March 26, to free all the hostages, who include the sick, the elderly, women and former government soldiers.
Chavez also proposed international mediation involving Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, France, Spain, Portugal and perhaps the Vatican, in addition to intervention from the Organization of American States (OAS).
Since September 2007, Chavez has mediated with FARC, trying to reach a deal for a hostage swap between some 40 hostages and about 500 FARC rebels jailed by Colombia.
Early this year, FARC released six hostages. Chavez said he lost contact with the rebel group following a Colombian raid on a FARC camp in Ecuadorian territory where FARC’s No.2 commander RaulReyes was killed.
Recently FARC has lost several top leaders in addition to Marulanda, who was believed to have been in his late 70s, and Reyes. Analysts say this provided an unprecedented opportunity for the hostage release.
FARC now holds 750 hostages, including 39 high-profile hostages.