IPS-English COLOMBIA: Venezuela's Chávez to Help Seek Humanitarian Exchange Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2007 16:34:30 -0700 COLOMBIA: Venezuela's Chávez Humberto Márquez * CARACAS, Aug 21 (IPS) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has agreed to help negotiate the release of hostages held for years by Colombia's guerrillas, after meeting with the captives' families. ”Marulanda, wherever you are, this is Chávez talking to you from the Palacio de Miraflores (Venezuela's presidential palace): I don't know you, but I'm here with the families of Colombian men and women who are being held captive,” the Venezuelan leader said Monday night, surrounded by the relatives of hostages held by the FARC, Colombia's biggest rebel group. He was addressing ”Manuel Marulanda”, nom de guerre of the head of the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), which is holding 45 prominent hostages -- politicians, as well as members of the military and the police -- with the aim of swapping them for hundreds of imprisoned guerrillas. Colombian President Álvaro Uribe gave opposition Senator Piedad Córdoba the green light to travel to Caracas with 14 relatives of hostages, to meet with Chávez. The relatives included Yolanda Pulecio, the mother of former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, and teacher Gustavo Moncayo, whose son has been held by the FARC for nearly 10 years, and who recently walked hundreds of kilometres and camped out in downtown Bogotá to demand that Uribe negotiate a humanitarian prisoner-hostage swap. ”This is the most astute move that has been made to strengthen the image of President Chávez,” Venezuelan political analyst Beatriz de Majo, an expert on Colombia, told IPS, ”because he wins in any scenario, no matter what the outcome.” After meeting with the hostages' family members, Chávez agreed to be an ”observer and guarantor” to help broker a humanitarian exchange, and addressed Uribe and Marulanda ”from the heart, to ask you to facilitate this task, and not to block the efforts made.” The FARC ”have said they will accept a demilitarised safe haven for 45 days, and we must take that as a sign of goodwill,” said the Venezuelan leader. To negotiate a humanitarian exchange, the FARC are demanding that the government withdraw troops from a demilitarised zone, where talks could be held. But Uribe has rejected that condition. As eventual talks are delayed, 11 regional legislators held hostage by the FARC for five years were killed in June in the midst of a shootout. ”If Uribe does not agree for Chávez to contact the FARC and if he steadfastly refuses to yield to any of their demands, he will look very bad as a result of getting the neighbouring president involved only to refuse to make any concession,” said de Majo. ”The Venezuelan leader, meanwhile, will have demonstrated his goodwill to help seek an agreement in a sister nation,” she added. If the Colombian president budges in his position and agrees to negotiate, ”perhaps altars to Chávez will be set up in Colombian homes, because there is no more dramatic issue for that society now than the humanitarian accord, and the left's position vis-à-vis Uribe would be strengthened,” said the analyst. The right-wing Uribe ”would then have to figure out how to take advantage of Caracas' achievement to strengthen himself and keep the left from growing, because if he is replaced in the government by the left, that would make Colombia another ally of Chávez and his ambitions for the region, and would bring another Andean country into the camp of the countries at loggerheads with the United States,” said de Majo. In the view of José Vicente Rangel, Chávez's former vice president and foreign minister, the meeting between the Venezuelan leader and the hostages' families ”is the most important and bold step seen in recent times, because he is taking the bull by the horns.” Chávez and Uribe ”get along well, and although they have very different political and ideological positions, they are both pragmatic leaders,” said Rangel, who pointed out that ”such initiatives have adversaries in both Venezuela and Colombia, where there are, as well as in Washington, hawks opposed to making any concession.” Camilo Restrepo, a Colombian peace commissioner under president Andrés Pastrana (1998-2002), said that ”an international presence is very important for negotiations of a humanitarian exchange. But everything will depend now on the political will demonstrated by the government and the FARC.” Chávez offered Venezuela as neutral territory for a meeting between delegates of the government and the FARC, Senator Córdoba, and the Colombian government's peace commissioner, and for an eventual humanitarian exchange. And as a goodwill gesture towards Colombia, he announced that he would pardon a group of 27 Colombians sentenced in 2005 to six years in prison for forming part of a larger group of 130 Colombian paramilitaries captured in 2004 near Caracas, wearing Venezuelan army uniforms. The men were charged with plotting an attack, under orders from Venezuelan military officers, on a National Guard base near the capital in order to create chaos and destabilise the government. But Uribe also stands to gain from this initiative, which has diverted attention from the ongoing ”parapolitics” scandal in Colombia triggered by revelations of the close ties between politicians allied with the president and the far-right paramilitary militias, which are led by drug traffickers. The Colombian leader has embraced the idea of facilitators, and has named Senator Córdoba to play that role in the case of the hostages. Other facilitators are three European countries -- France, Spain and Switzerland --, which are working for a humanitarian exchange, conservative politician Álvaro Leyva, and Communist Party leader Carlos Lozano, who is the director of the weekly magazine Voz. The families of the FARC hostages said they hoped that Chávez could help broker a humanitarian exchange. ”His backing is very important because he has a strong leadership role in Latin America and is sure to obtain support from all of the region's presidents,” Pulecio told journalists. Betancourt's mother said that ”I have talked to Argentine President Néstor Kirchner and his wife, presidential candidate Cristina Fernández, and they are with us. And if Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador and Venezuela add their voices to our request for a humanitarian exchange, that would be a major force for removing the hurdles blocking the process.” In a meeting with Chávez last week, Córdoba publicly urged him to help make contact with the FARC, and to provide support in the matter of the hostages. ”That does not solve anything, but it helps generate conditions. It is Uribe and the FARC who must reach the decisions,” one of Córdoba's advisers told IPS. Through Chávez, Córdoba is seeking ”the participation of most of the Latin American presidents, in order for them to ask the different sides to sit down and negotiate,” said the adviser, who asked to remain anonymous. ”The mechanism would be Chávez, not the OAS (Organisation of American States),” he added. But Córdoba's broader aim is to create a national movement in favour of a humanitarian exchange. With nine weeks to go to the local elections, the senator proposes the inclusion of a special ballot in favour of an accord between the government and the FARC, even if the ballot is not officially counted. ”Now the only thing we can do is patiently wait for a communiqué from the FARC leadership in response to what President Chávez directly said yesterday to Manuel Marulanda,” said Clara de Jara, the wife of Alan Jara, former governor of the department of Meta, who is one of the FARC hostages. * With additional reporting from Constanza Vieira in Colombia. ***** + COLOMBIA: FARC Hostages Died in Military-Rebel Shootout (http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38966) + COLOMBIA: Possible ELN Ceasefire, 11 FARC Hostages Killed (http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38356) + COLOMBIA: 'Peace Walker' Welcomed by Tens of Thousands (http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38759) + VENEZUELA: Colombian Army Implicated in Paramilitary's Cross-Border Activities - 2004 (http://ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=23702) + Colombia: A Nation Torn - More IPS News (http://www.ipsnews.net/new_focus/colombia/index.asp) (END/IPS/LA IP HD CS/TRASP-SW/HM/DCL/07) = 08220236 ORP001 NNNN