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Kidnapped Colombia lawmakers urge talks

Kidnapped Colombia lawmakers urge talks

By Patrick Markey 1 hour, 23 minutes ago

BOGOTA (Reuters) - Twelve Colombian lawmakers held hostage by leftist guerrillas sent a message on Friday to President Alvaro Uribe urging him to enter into talks with rebels over their release after five years in captivity.

Families wept as they watched the video released by rebels showing the hostages as they praised their children, sent greetings to their wives and called on Uribe and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC, to negotiate their freedom.

It was the first public proof of life since last year from the lawmakers who are among hundreds of soldiers, politicians and others held in jungle camps. The captives also include three U.S. contract workers taken four years ago.

"Five years, five years of pain, five years waiting for the government and the FARC to show their political and historic status by agreeing on our liberty," hostage Edinson Perez said, holding his palm scrawled with "Until When?" up to the camera.

Uribe, whose own father was killed 20 years ago during a botched rebel kidnapping, is popular for his hard-line security campaign that has driven rebels back into the jungles and dramatically reduced violence from the four-decade conflict.

But achieving the release of hostages, including French-Colombian citizen and former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, has become one his most sensitive tasks since the U.S.-educated attorney was re-elected last year.

The lawmakers shown on Friday were snatched in a FARC raid on a Valle del Cauca province assembly building in 2002.

The FARC, which has been fighting since the 1960s and is Colombia's oldest rebel group, wants the government to demilitarize two rural towns for talks on exchanging 61 key hostages for hundreds of jailed guerrillas.

But the government, which says the FARC is deeply involved in Colombia's huge cocaine trade, wants more guarantees, fearing the rebels will use the area to regroup as they did during similar talks with Uribe's predecessor.

Authorities say two municipalities, Florida and Pradera, are an important corridor for cocaine from southern provinces, where illicit coca leaf used to make the drug is cultivated. Uribe has ordered troops to hunt down rebels holding hostages.

"The government can accept a meeting zone, but not a demilitarized zone," Uribe said in the city of Cali, where relatives of the hostages saw the video. "I am sorry, but if I do not say this here and now, when should I say it?"

Uribe has received billions of dollars of U.S. military and counternarcotics aid and also has negotiated the surrender of illegal paramilitaries who once fought the rebels. He now faces a scandal linking some of his political allies to the militias, which Washington brand as drug-trafficking terrorists.

France, Switzerland and Spain have presented a proposal for talks, but fledgling moves toward negotiations stalled last year after a series of bombing attacks the government blamed on the FARC.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070427/wl_nm/colombia_hostages_dc_4

By juancegomez on Apr 27, 2007, 18:17 in Politics & the war.

gorgonabob says on Apr 27, 2007, 18:44:

i would offer the FARC a demilitarized zone wait to they all got there and drop a bomb in the middle of it.. a few hundred innocents may lose there lives but youll save a hell of lot more lives in the long run.

0 funny, 0 helpful.

goin_south says on Apr 27, 2007, 23:43:

g-bob, I understand your thinking and, you and I, both know that is gonna illicit some serious response here on PBsH.

The World News sources should stop giving Uribe credit for negotiating the surrender of the paramilitaries; THESE ARE HIS PEOPLE. We all know it now. Even bleepin idiots like myself knew it a few years ago, when first I happened upon PBH. As much as sometimes I have thought well of Uribe, I also understand the other side, of those who don't care for him at all, be they colombian or otherwise. It doesn't take a genius to see what has happened and is happening.

Where do we go from here?

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goin_south says on Apr 27, 2007, 23:46:

plus, If they did it with the demilitarized zone... I wouldn't expect them to be stupid enough to be marchin a few thousand Farc troops into that place right away, now... would ya?

Where do we go from here?

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billyb says on Apr 28, 2007, 00:10:

Even though visceraly i would like to... have all the FARC exterminated, I understand that 80% plus of the soldados razos want no part of this war. And while in the end it will have to be a negotiated outcome, it will not come until the FARC leadership, which is so out of touch with colombia's modern reality, understands that they have no chance of winning militarally and negotiate in good faith and get their most important concepts accepted, but then again, does anybody (even them) know what those are?

0 funny, 0 helpful.

platano says on Apr 29, 2007, 22:48:

I would support negotiation with the terrorists By negotiating the two sides can come closer together.
By negotiating you are rewarding the terrorists, which will lead to more kidnapping, which will lead to more negotiation, in a upward spiral of communication and closeness until the issues have been resolved and the kidnappings stop. Negotiation, rewarding the terrorists with attention and taking them seriously, is the way to increase the dialogue between the parties and to eventually come to an end to the kidnappings. plátano

plátano

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