[NYTr] FARC Hostage Release Meets Yet Another Obstacle Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2008 17:42:17 -0600 (CST) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit Venezuela Information Office (VIO) http://www.rethinkvenezuela.com excerpted from VIO Venezuela Daily News Roundup - Jan 2, 2008 [ Hopes of a new hostage for prisoner swap in Colombia suffered a set back early this week when Venezuelan helicopters, outfitted with the insignia of the red cross, were not permitted to fly into FARC territory to retrieve 3 hostages agreed upon between President Chavez and the leadership of the FARC. Since late last week, the Venezuelan president, other world leaders and even filmmaker Oliver Stone, were on hand to witness what many hoped would be the beginning to a new Colombian peace effort. Unfortunately, the FARC alleged yesterday that President Alvaro Uribe had ordered military operations in the jungle region where the three captives were believed to be held and thus distinguished chances of any prisoner retrieval mission for the moment. President Chavez said last night that, "Nothing has failed. The operation is continuing," and left helicopters in Colombia for future efforts. -VIO] Associated Press - January 2, 2008 http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g4KHTkP2iDNsZIPq48q97-4SvKOQD8TTKKQO0 ANALYSIS: Rebels Leave Chavez Hanging By JOSHUA GOODMAN BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) ? It was one of the boldest initiatives yet for Latin America's emerging leftist alliance and it didn't even get off the ground. Answering a call by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, political heavyweights from five governments attempted to break through a deadlock in the region's most entrenched conflict: Colombia's half-century guerrilla war. But for all their devotion to Latin American unity, observers from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Cuba and Ecuador couldn't persuade the secretive Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, to abandon its deep mistrust of Colombia's government and fulfill a weeks-old promise to free three hostages, including a 3-year-old boy. The FARC, in a letter to Chavez, blamed operations by Colombia's U.S.-backed military for their decision not to tell where in the eastern Colombian jungles ? a region the size of France ? two Venezuelan helicopters could pick up the captives. As the mission fell apart Monday, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe dismissed the rebels' accusation as more lies from a "terrorist group." Chavez, in turn, sympathized with the FARC and accused Uribe of "throwing a bomb" on his efforts to recover the hostages: ex-congresswoman Consuelo Gonzalez, former vice presidential candidate Clara Rojas and her 3-year-old son Emmanuel, fathered by a guerrilla captor. The truth about what led the FARC to get cold feet may never be known, and Chavez has vowed to plow on for the hostages' release despite the setback. But by failing to deliver the hostages, the FARC left Chavez hanging in a highly visible way that will likely force the firebrand leftist to take a different tack. The mission's collapse "shows Chavez doesn't have the ability to get an express response from the FARC. He clearly can't influence FARC leadership to make quick decisions," said Adam Isacson, a Colombia analyst for the Washington-based Center for International Policy. For the past month, Chavez has held out an olive branch to the FARC while publicly vilifying Uribe, his ideological adversary, as Washington's lapdog and puppet. Fetching the hostages on Colombian soil was widely seen as political payback for Uribe's abrupt ending of Chavez's efforts to broker a swap of 47 hostages ? including three American defense contractors and former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt ? for hundreds of jailed rebels. By inviting former Argentine President Nestor Kirchner and other like-minded observers, it was also a chance for Chavez to rally an alliance of leftist governments, many of which share the Venezuelan leader's antagonism for President Bush. So confident was Chavez of success, he even welcomed American filmmaker Oliver Stone to film the handover as part of a documentary. But the strategy backfired amid the FARC's recalcitrance. "This reveals the FARC for who they are ? not a group that's responsive to the outside world," said Michael Shifter, an analyst at the Washington-based Inter American Dialogue. "Chavez thought since he's the revolutionary leader, they'd fall in line. And he assembled all his friends and they would be witness to this success." Although Chavez is unlikely to suffer much of a setback among Venezuela's already polarized society, the drawn-out, ill-fated mission could be a blow to the ambitions of his leftist allies. After being marooned three days in Colombia, the observers returned home on New Year's Eve ? some of them visibly disgusted. Shifter predicted that from now on, Chavez's allies "may not be as drawn in by his bluster and bravado." "He's shown he's not the miracle worker. Colombia's problems have been around for a long time," Shifter said. But Brazil's observer, Marco Aurelio Garcia, offered to return and said he doesn't think the tensions between Chavez and Uribe would keep the hostages from being freed. And because the rebels have an ideological affinity for Chavez, the socialist president remains a leading hope for reuniting the hostages with their families, who see Uribe's hardline policies as an obstacle to dialogue with the FARC. Since Uribe took office in 2002, the two sides have never held face-to-face talks. Instead, he's used aggressive American intelligence sharing backed by $600 million in annual military aid to drive the FARC deeper into the jungle. Chavez says his mission continues despite the mistrust. "Nothing has failed. The operation is continuing," Chavez said Monday night, adding that Venezuela plans to leave its helicopters in Colombia in hopes of still receiving pick-up coordinates from the FARC. The direction of the hostage drama also may depend in large part on the next steps by Uribe, who on Monday said the FARC might not even be holding the boy, Emmanuel. Uribe said a boy matching the description of Emmanuel was handed over malnourished and suffering from malaria to child welfare authorities in a FARC stronghold in July 2005. The boy has been living in a Bogota foster home. Uribe said DNA tests of Rojas' family were needed to prove or disprove the "hypothesis." A group of Colombian officials arrived in Caracas on Tuesday to carry out the tests among relatives. *** Reuters - January 1, 2008 http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN01612491 Colombia Hostage Deal Fiasco Bad News for Captives By Hugh Bronstein BOGOTA, Jan 1 (Reuters) - Colombia's government and Marxist rebels are likely to toughen their negotiating stances, leaving dozens of kidnap victims in limbo, after a deal to free three hostages crumbled on Monday in a flurry of accusations. Brokered by Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chavez, the plan to release two women captives and a child born to one of them in captivity had raised hopes for a broader deal to free high-profile hostages including French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt. But the rescue operation evaporated on Monday with the rebels and Chavez accusing conservative President Alvaro Uribe of wrecking it by ordering military operations in the jungle region where the three captives were believed to be held. Uribe denied the allegation and accused the rebels of lying. Analysts say it will now be very difficult to revive the rescue mission or negotiate the release of other hostages. "After this, the guerrillas and the government will dig in their heels," political commentator Daniel Coronell said on Tuesday. "The hostages will probably spend years more in the jungle before another serious effort can be mounted to try to free them." The three hostages are Consuelo Gonzalez, Clara Rojas and her son Emmanuel, who was fathered by a rebel fighter and is thought to be about four years old. Rojas was kidnapped during her 2002 vice presidential campaign and Gonzalez, a former lawmaker, was taken in 2001. Early last month, leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, said they would hand the three over only to fellow left-winger Chavez or someone designated by him. DISTRUST Uribe has clashed repeatedly with Chavez but agreed to let him send Venezuelan helicopters marked with the Red Cross symbol deep into its territory to collect the hostages. As the deal collapsed, Chavez accused Uribe of sabotage. The Colombian leader responded by suggesting the rebels might not even have Emmanuel, saying he may have been secretly turned over to Colombian child welfare officials in 2005. "Considering the deep distrust between Chavez and Uribe and between Uribe and the FARC, any future effort toward a hostage release will require a wider international effort," said Mauricio Romero, a Bogota-based analyst with the International Center for Transitional Justice think tank Uribe, whose father was killed in a botched FARC kidnapping over 20 years ago, is popular for cutting violence and crime with his U.S.-backed crackdown on the FARC. But the guerrilla army still controls wide rural areas used to produce the cocaine that funds its insurgency. Uribe has refused to grant the FARC's demand for a safe zone where gun-toting guerrillas could hand over 47 kidnapped politicians, police and military officers in exchange for jailed rebels. Among the 47 are Betancourt, snatched in 2002, and three American anti-drug contractors captured in 2003. "It would help if the United States could be more involved in hostage talks to balance the influence of left-wing governments like Venezuela's and Argentina's," Romero said. "This would give Uribe more confidence in the negotiations." The United States has kept a low profile in the negotiations, while French President Nicolas Sarkozy has proclaimed the liberation of Betancourt a top foreign policy priority. *** The New York Times - January 2, 2008 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/world/americas/02colombia.html ChC!vez's Promised Hostage Release Fizzles, His Second Major Setback in Weeks By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO RIO de JANEIRO ? Last week, Venezuela's president, Hugo ChC!vez, seemed on the verge of one of his biggest triumphs to date. Now, amid renewed acrimony with the Colombian leader, Clvaro Uribe, he is staring at his second major political defeat in just over a month. Using his credibility as a former rebel leader, Mr. ChC!vez orchestrated a plan to release three hostages being held for years in the jungle by a Colombian guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC. Bristling with confidence, he assembled his allies in Latin America, including the former Argentine president, NC)stor Kirchner, to witness a breakthrough in the decades-old conflict between the Colombian government and the FARC. The movie director Oliver Stone was part of a multinational group of observers that included diplomats from seven countries, including France and Switzerland. Then on Monday, Mr. ChC!vez's showman moment seemed to turn from history-making success into his latest failure. For reasons that remain unclear, the FARC refused for four days to give the exact location of the hostages to Venezuelan helicopter pilots. Mr. ChC!vez read a letter from the rebel group late Monday that said the promised security conditions had not been met. "This is an important defeat for Hugo ChC!vez's regional agenda to promote his Bolivarian revolution and utilize his contacts with armed groups to win political influence," said RomC!n Ortiz, the director of security and post-conflict for the Ideas for Peace Foundation, a BogotC! research institute focused on Colombia's armed conflict. A successful mission would have been likely to have embarrassed Mr. Uribe, a conservative who has made little progress in negotiating the release of any of the several hundred hostages held in jungle camps, some for nearly a decade. Mr. Uribe has been skeptical of Mr. ChC!vez's attempts to spread his Socialist ideology across the continent. At the same time, the operation would have helped Mr. ChC!vez bounce back from a narrow defeat in a referendum early last month on a proposal that would have tightened his grip on power. For several days, at least, Mr. ChC!vez and Argentina's president, Cristina FernC!ndez de Kirchner, also managed to divert attention from the brewing scandal involving a suitcase filled with $800,000 in cash believed to be a secret Venezuelan donation to her campaign. Mrs. Kirchner dispatched her husband to Colombia, and several other countries joined in a scramble to claim credit for helping to break the impasse in the only armed conflict in the Western hemisphere. But the FARC, which appeared to want to help Mr. ChC!vez while showing up Mr. Uribe, did not cooperate. "Clearly, ChC!vez did provide the best chance for making some progress, but it wasn't enough," said Michael Shifter, a vice president at the Inter-American Dialogue, a policy group in Washington. "In the end, the distrust that the FARC felt for the Colombian government trumped any good feelings they felt for ChC!vez." Mr. Uribe accused the FARC of lying about its reasons for scuttling the promised transfers, even suggesting that the rebels did not have one of the three hostages, a 3-year-old boy named Emmanuel who was born in captivity to a rebel soldier and Clara Rojas, another of the hostages. Ms. Rojas and Consuelo GonzC!lez were to have been delivered with the boy to the Venezuelans. Hopes ran high that the transfer of the three hostages would lead to wider prisoner exchanges for more of the 700 hostages reportedly still in guerrilla hands. They are believed to include a former Colombian presidential candidate, Ingrid Betancourt, a dual French-Colombian citizen kidnapped in 2002. France's president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has been lobbying for Ms. Betancourt's release since videos and photos were seized late last month that apparently showed her alive. The materials also appeared to show that three American contractors, Thomas Howes, Marc Gonsalves and Keith Stansell, who were captured in 2003 when their plane went down in the Colombian jungle, were alive as well. Now the failed mission has exposed Mr. ChC!vez to criticism of misplaced priorities. As he worked to mediate the release of hostages in Colombia, in Venezuela kidnappings are spiraling. Some estimates show that Venezuela has more abductions per capita than Colombia now, but the Venezuelan government has done little to tackle the problem. The breakdown in the deal with the FARC led to a new round of harsh accusations between Mr. ChC!vez and Mr. Uribe. Mr. ChC!vez said he had "plenty of reasons to doubt Uribe's team and their analysis and hypotheses." He accused Mr. Uribe of trying to "dynamite" the operation, a claim Mr. Uribe denied. *** Washington Post - January 2, 2008 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/01/AR2008010102341.html?hpid=sec-world Colombia: Child Born to Hostage Is Not With FARC By Juan Forero BOGOTA, Colombia, Jan. 1 -- A 3 1/2 -year-old boy whom Marxist rebels pledged to include in a hostage release that collapsed Monday is not in their hands, and has almost certainly been living in a foster care program in Bogota, Colombian officials said in interviews on Tuesday. They believe they have located the boy and are conducting DNA tests to confirm his identity. In an intricate operation overseen by Venezuela, helicopters from that neighboring country were to have picked up the boy, his hostage mother and another female prisoner in the jungle and flown them to Venezuela. But anguished families who have waited as long as six years to see their loved ones freed were instead shattered as the mission unraveled. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, blamed government military operations in the area for the failure of the long-negotiated release. But Colombian officials questioned how the release could have gone forward at all, saying they had learned that the boy, born in captivity to hostage Clara Rojas, had passed out of rebel hands in 2005. ad_icon An emissary working for the rebels turned over the boy, named Emmanuel, to child protective services in the isolated town of San Jose del Guaviare in 2005, two senior officials said Tuesday. From there, he apparently wound up with a foster family in Bogota, his real identity unknown to anyone, the officials said. The astonishing twist in a saga that captivated Colombia before the Christmas holidays began to go public Monday when Colombian President B?lvaro Uribe flew to the operation's staging area in the town of Villavicencio. The rescue attempt, mediated by Venezuelan President Hugo ChB?vez, drew prominent observers to Villavicencio, including filmmaker Oliver Stone and former Argentine president NB?stor Kirchner. Uribe, known for his intense hostility toward the FARC, publicly accused the rebels of reneging on their pledge to liberate the three hostages because the group did not have control of the boy. "When the FARC began to say that they were not turning over the hostages, supposedly because of military operations, when we had done everything possible within our reach to facilitate the hand over, we saw that the FARC was trying to fool ChB?vez, the international community and us," said Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos in a telephone interview. The FARC, responding on its de facto Web site, denied that the boy was not in its care and said the government had launched a "ball of smoke" to divert attention from the real reason for the operation's collapse: Uribe's intransigence. The Uribe administration said it is hoping to scientifically match DNA from the boy, who is being closely guarded by child protection authorities in Bogota, with samples from the family of Clara Rojas, a kidnapped politician who is believed to have given birth in a rebel camp in 2004. A rebel commander is reportedly the father. On Tuesday, a special team was dispatched to Caracas to take DNA samples from Clara Gonzalez de Rojas, mother of Clara Rojas, and the prisoner's brother, Ivan Rojas. They and other relatives of the hostages have been in the Venezuelan capital since last week, awaiting the release of their loved ones. DNA samples are also being sought from other relatives of the boy, said Santos, who said that authorities hoped for a clear match within a few days with samples from the boy found in Bogota. "We don't lose anything by doing this," Ivan Rojas told reporters in Caracas on Tuesday. "Why would we put things in doubt?" Last year, the boy's existence received broad news coverage in Colombia and beyond after a policeman, Jhon Frank Pinchao, escaped from a FARC camp and spoke of how he had been with Rojas and her newborn son in 2004. He said the boy was named Emmanuel. The guerrilla group received widespread condemnation for holding a child prisoner. On Dec. 18, it announced it would hand over three hostages to Venezuela's government: Consuelo Gonzalez, a former congresswoman held since 2001; Rojas, a politician kidnapped in 2002; and the boy. The FARC pledge prompted hope that the group, which has more than 750 hostages, including three U.S. Defense Department contractors, was prepared to make other unilateral releases. The pledge came shortly after the Uribe government had terminated an effort by Venezuela to mediate the release of prisoners. Colombia approved the renewed role for ChB?vez, and he began orchestrating a complex operation in which Venezuelan helicopters would fly deep into rebel territory to pick up the hostages. But Santos and another senior government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Tuesday that military intelligence and infiltrators into the rebel group determined that while ChB?vez was overseeing the preparations, the FARC was frantically trying to locate Emmanuel. The FARC is widely dispersed and has a decentralized command. The guerrilla leaders who offered to give up the boy may not have realized they no longer had him, the Colombian officials said. Or they may have thought they could quickly recover him. The guerrillas began accusing the Colombian military of launching operations, which Santos and the other senior official denied. After the government received a tip about the boy's real whereabouts, authorities began to go through the records of about 100 children who had been turned over to child protection services in southern Colombia in 2005. They quickly narrowed their search to three boys and, by Friday, felt that they had located Emmanuel, now bearing a different name. Santos and the other official said the boy they found had suffered an injury at birth, the same kind of injury that the escaped police officer reported Emmanuel had suffered. The boy had burn marks on one hand, a wound that Emmanuel also had. He also had suffered from jungle maladies, including malaria and leishmaniasis, which are unheard of in this chilly capital 8,000 feet above sea level. "The coincidences are many," Santos said. "When we saw that the information coincided, well that gives us a certain level of confidence that the hypothesis that they didn't have the boy was true." The defense minister also said that the man who turned the boy over to authorities in 2005, whom he identified as JosB? Gomez, had gone back to child protection authorities in recent days to try to retrieve the boy. On Tuesday morning, the officials said, Gomez confessed to prosecutors in San Jose del Guaviare that the FARC had turned the boy over to him in 2005. Claiming to be the uncle of the boy's mother, he had then given the boy to authorities. The Colombian government's account at first irked the Venezuelan government. But after receiving details Tuesday, ChB?vez struck a more conciliatory tone, wishing Uribe a happy holiday and calling for the two to work together for peace in Colombia. *** PA (UK) - Dec 30, 2007 http://ukpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5h4uB0M1Jx7u0tWTM_Af2aFj-SOxw Stone Set for Hostage Mercy Mission Press Association American film-maker Oliver Stone has praised President Hugo Chavez as the Venezuelan leader launched a mission to airlift three hostages held by left-wing rebels from Colombia's jungles. Mr Stone, who stood near Chavez as two Russian-made helicopters took off from an airfield in western Venezuela, said he was working on a film and hoped to accompany the humanitarian operation into Colombia. "I'm doing a documentary about Latin America and also about North America. You have to wait around to see it," Mr Stone told reporters. He said he planned to take part in the mission, calling it a "beautiful, great process". "I'm hoping it works. I'm all for this," Mr Stone said. "I've never been in such a thing. I'm very proud to be a part of this." The Oscar-winning director, who made a 2003 documentary about Cuban president Fidel Castro as well as the movie Platoon, called Mr Chavez a "great man" and said: "I'm a fan." Urging Mr Stone to speak to reporters, Chavez told him: "The girls want to see you!" He joked that Stone was an "envoy" for Mr Chavez's capitalist arch-enemy, US president George Bush. "There are some good Americans. That's why I'm here, to remind you," Mr Stone said. Mr Chavez revealed that Stone was in Venezuela on Thursday, saying they had met for two hours and noting the director was a Vietnam veteran who now questioned the reasons for that war. He said he did not know whether Mr Stone's documentary would be about the Colombian hostages, including three -- two women and a boy -- who may soon be freed after being held for years by left-wing guerrillas. "He's going around doing research. He says he wants to know and learn deeply the history of these nations," Mr Chavez said. "He's an anti-imperialist, Oliver Stone. He's a good man." * ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us Our main website: http://www.blythe.org List Archives: http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ Subscribe: http://blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr =================================================================