Colombia's long bloody conflict
Hostage swap offers opening for peace in Colombia
By Veronica Sardon, dpa German Press Agency
Friday, October 12, 2007
Buenos Aires- Whether the hostages held by Colombia's leftist rebels will be free anytime soon remains anybody's guess. However, recent initiatives to secure their release have produced an impressive and unexpected pool of promising gestures.
Presidents Alvaro Uribe of Colombia and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela are meeting Friday on the Colombian border town of La Guajira for talks including the chances that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) would free about 45 hostages - some held for more than 10 years - in exchange for the release of nearly 500 imprisoned members of the Marxist rebel army.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy will not participate in the meeting but has been a major backer of the prisoner exchange plans in which Chavez - a strident leftist who controls Latin America's largest oil reserves - has been a key player.
"The foreign initiatives to shake the Colombian conflict have had a stronger effect than any efforts within Colombia to date," journalist Daniel Samper, brother of former Colombian president Ernesto Samper (1994-98), wrote in a recent opinion piece in the daily El Tiempo.
One hostage is the driving force behind the efforts: Ingrid Betancourt. Now 45 years old, this French-Colombian citizen has spent more than five years in captivity since her abduction by FARC in February 2002, while she was campaigning as the presidential candidate of the Green Oxygen Party.
One of FARC's tactics while waging a 40-year insurgency has been to hold hundreds hostages, in most cases demanding cash ransoms that help support its 17,000 troops, the largest of Colombia's illicit armies. These victims of kidnapping for profit are not part of the current talks.
But a few dozen FARC captives have political or military value, including three US contractors and a number of Colombian soldiers, police officers and politicians, including Betancourt, whose plight has become an international cause celebre.
Sarkozy moved swiftly after his election in May to get involved, a high-level effort are rare expression of interest by a European power in Colombia's civil war. He asked Uribe to release a FARC prisoner considered the group's foreign minister, "Rodrigo Granda," and Uribe complied in June.
Colombian authorities have since released more than 100 other FARC members. The rebel group, however, refused to free Betancourt or other hostages, saying it had not agreed to any exchange and instead accusing the Uribe government of trying to divert attention from a scandal over alleged ruling-party links with rightwing paramilitaries.
Uribe, whose own father was slain by FARC, was elected in 2002 and re-elected in 2006 on a hardline stance against the guerrillas, amid still-unsubstantiated accusations of his connections to the paramilitaries.
He remains very popular in Colombia, with a 73-per-cent approval rating in a recent survey of public opinion.
His first term from 2002-06 was marked by significant success in curbing violence in the Andean country, including a sort-of-amnesty programme for right-wing paramilitaries who came in from the bush and disarmed.
But a large number of innocent bystanders have been killed in Uribe's military crackdown on FARC. In his 2006 re-inaugural speech, Uribe stressed his "will to achieve peace."
There are, of course, reasons that Uribe is less than keen to agree on a hostage swap.
"First, because he does not want to be seen as giving in to FARC or to international pressure - and, second, because there are many in Colombia for whom war is a great business, mainly the armed forces," Argentine journalist Pablo Biffi told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
Biffi, who recently interviewed FARC number two "Raul Reyes" in the Colombian jungle, believes Chavez could be the key to overcoming past hurdles by pushing both sides.
Wielding not only oil wealth but also an arsenal of weapons and aircraft, the Venezuelan president has the means to put pressure on Uribe to finally agree to longstanding demands by the rebels to demilitarize two towns as a safe zone.
Chavez can also lean on FARC - now moving freely across the Colombian border into Venezuela - to agree to Uribe's demands that freed rebels do not take up arms again. A number of countries have offered to take demilitarized rebels after their release.
There is skepticism that the initiative can evolve into an opportunity for long-term peace. There have been hostage swaps before, with no end to the conflict. The rebels are well-established and confident of their chances of survival, and they all have a lot at stake.
But with the addition of powerful influences from France and Venezuela, many observers are more optimistic than they have been in decades that there may be some forward movement in the long, bloody conflict.
© 2006 - dpa German Press Agency
