COLOMBIA: Hostages and Peace as Pawns

By Constanza Vieira Reprint | | Print |

Constanza Vieira

BOGOTA, Feb 22 2008 (IPS) - This time, the Colombian government has not complained that they do not know the coordinates of the place where four politicians held as hostages by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) are to be released.

“If there is a military operation it will seriously endanger the hostages,” said French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner on Thursday, after a meeting with Colombian President Álvaro Uribe.

At nightfall, Bogotá announced that they had pinpointed the location of the second group of hostages to be unilaterally released by the FARC.

Defence Minister Juan Manuel Santos claims the army knows that they are close to the place where politicians Consuelo González and Clara Rojas were freed on Jan. 10, near the small town of Tomachipán, in the southern province of Guaviare.

The hostages concerned are lawmakers Gloria Polanco, Luis Eladio Pérez, Orlando Beltrán, and possibly Jorge Eduardo Gechem.

The first three were taken hostage in different incidents in 2001, and Gechem was kidnapped on Feb. 20, 2002.

The announcement by the government is apparently intended to show that it has gained ground in the war against the insurgents, which it is fighting with support and funding from the United States, under Plan Colombia.

Santos is a shareholder in the newspaper El Tiempo, which confirmed FARC reports that “intense military operations” are taking place in Guaviare, including the use of “sophisticated U.S. fighter planes.”

By intercepting radio communications during operations, the FARC know that instructions to Colombian Air Force planes are given in English, a source from the guerrilla command told IPS in 2005.

The Colombian government promised it will let the hostage release proceed without interference, but there are fears about the reaction of the guerrilla unit escorting the hostages should the army attack.

So far, the FARC have carried out their threat of executing hostages if government forces track them down.

The Marxist rural movement which took up arms in 1964 wants to exchange a group of between 40 and 45 hostages for between 400 and 500 imprisoned guerrillas, including two who were extradited to the United States by Uribe.

The FARC are also holding three U.S. contractors who worked for Plan Colombia and were captured in February 2003.

According to the defence minister, the government “has known for some time” where the four hostages are.

But he released his bombshell hours after Uribe rejected out of hand Kouchner’s proposal to include Venezuela, whose President Hugo Chávez is his regional arch-rival, in the group of countries working to broker a humanitarian agreement.

Chávez became involved in the hostage drama in early August on the initiative of Colombian opposition Senator Piedad Córdoba, of the Liberal Party.

A few days later, Uribe officially accepted their mediation, but terminated it abruptly on Nov. 21, sparking a serious crisis between Colombia and Venezuela.

Uribe has constantly intervened in controversial ways on the three occasions on which Chávez and Córdoba achieved substantial progress.

In late November, messengers carrying documents showing that hostages were still alive, as demanded by France and Democratic members of the U.S. Congress, were arrested in Bogotá by order of the government. The two female messengers are in the process of being extradited to the United States.

The release of Rojas and González, scheduled for Dec. 31, in the presence of observers from eight countries led by former Argentine President Néstor Kirchner, was delayed for 10 days because the army was bombing the area.

It is now known that months before the hostage release operation, Uribe already knew that Rojas’ son, Emmanuel, was not in the hands of the guerrillas who were promising to free him, but only at the last minute did he announce that the child was in a state institution for abandoned or abused children.

The Colombian president is determined to take military action, and hopes to force the FARC to negotiate on the government’s terms, which are that guerrillas freed in the exchange must become non-combatants.

On his return from a visit to Europe in January, Uribe ordered the army to locate guerrilla camps where the hostages are being held, without attacking them, in order to secure their unconditional release through international mediation later on.

The government’s hope is that, faced with such a show of strength, the FARC will stop killing the hostages when they are surrounded by the army.

But Uribe’s three interventions to date are not necessarily proof of superior military force. They were carried out at risky times, during operations that the guerrillas had announced in advance.

Kouchner said that when he talked to the Colombian president about military measures in cases where hostages are involved, he recommended that President Uribe “hold himself back, and he understood it very well.”

In the evening, the government’s Peace Commissioner, Luis Carlos Restrepo, wrote on his web site that “the unthinkable has happened with the FARC.” He says they are releasing hostages unilaterally “in order to bolster President Chávez’s image as a key player in the humanitarian releases.”

According to Restrepo, the FARC are trying to gather “a group of countries” that support Chávez, in order “to exert pressure on President Uribe to accept (the Venezuelan leader’s) mediation once again.”

The French foreign minister was rewarded by nothing but rejection from Uribe when he suggested creating a broad group of countries that could bring the two sides closer to an agreement. Peace negotiations would become possible after all the FARC’s civilian hostages are unilaterally released.

“The idea of the group (of observer countries) has still not been accepted, neither in its geometry nor in its composition,” said Kouchner. “We are continuing to work towards it.”

The countries involved might include Brazil, France, Switzerland, Cuba and Argentina. Uribe turned down participation by Venezuela, although the other countries, and the hostage’s families as well, want it to be included, because of the renown Chávez has earned as a mediator with the guerrillas.

“President Chávez has played a role in the first releases. But France cannot put pressure on Colombia. As a friendly country, it can, however, make proposals, and be very persistent on behalf of the hostages, and in the interests of peace,” Kouchner said. Restrepo casts aspersions on the credibility of press reports based on FARC sources, which say the insurgents are not interested in mediation by the Catholic Church, or Spain, an ally of the Uribe administration.

The high commissioner repeated an offer made by Uribe in December, which was rejected by the FARC: demarcating an uninhabited area of 150 square kilometres, from which even the army would withdraw, where “delegates of the parties” accompanied by international observers would meet “with the sole purpose of dialogue.”