COLOMBIA - VENEZUELA

Mystery surrounds status of boy hostage

Monday, December 31, 2007

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe said the three-year-old boy the FARC had promised to free was no longer in rebel hands. The release operation has been suspended . (Report: G. Cragg, M. Bertsch, N. Ransom)

   
Colombian rebels Monday said they would not now be able to release three hostages as planned, accusing the Colombian government of failing to guarantee the guerrillas' safety.
   
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who read the FARC announcement, said Colombian President Alvaro Uribe "torpedoed" the release effort by claiming that a little boy born in captivity to a hostage was not in rebel hands but was already found months ago.
   
Chavez called the child theory "a bunch of smoke." He said he knew "Uribe and his team well. They're a team that makes up things. My experience leads me to doubt Uribe's team and their hypotheses ..."
   
Chavez later said he would pursue "new options" in the release effort.
   
The release of two women held for more than five years in the Amazon jungle, and a three-year-old boy born in captivity, hit a new snag Monday after days of frantic preparations.
   
"Intense military operations in the zone make it impossible now" to release the three, the Marxist FARC rebels said in a statement read by Chavez, who has been spearheading the delicate mission.
   
"To continue under these conditions would endanger the lives of the people to be released, the other prisoners of war and the guerrillas carrying out this mission," the rebel statement added.
   
Venezuelan helicopters have been on stand-by in Villavicencio, Colombia since Friday for word to fly into the jungle to pick up Clara Rojas, her son Emmanuel born in captivity, and former lawmaker Consuelo Gonzalez.
   
Chavez said the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, one of the world's oldest insurgencies, had called for a "real ceasefire" before letting the hostages go.
   
But Uribe denied reports of fighting and said Bogota had agreed to open a safe corridor for the mission, which is operating under the auspices of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
   
"We were asked to establish a kind of strategic corridor. We accept this," Uribe said, adding "there has not been any fighting in this area."
   
Uribe, who arrived in this Colombian city earlier Monday to meet international observers taking part in "Operation Emmanuel," stressed his government had provided all the security guarantees that were asked for.
   
"What has the attitude of the FARC been? One of lies, and cheating," Uribe said in a speech shown on television, accusing the rebels of deliberately delaying the hostages' release.
   
Gonzalez and Rojas were snatched in 2001 and 2002 respectively. Rojas was a top aide to Franco-Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, who was seized at the same time and was not due to be released with the others.
   
But Uribe raised the possibility the rebels could not complete the handover of the hostages as they were no longer holding the little boy.
   
"The FARC can't keep the promise to free the hostages because they no longer have the child, Emmanuel, in their power," Uribe said, suggesting instead that a boy found in July 2006 in southeast Colombia was Emmanuel -- he was being cared for in a children's home in Bogota.
   
Uribe proposed that DNA tests be carried out on the child and Emmanuel's grandmother to see if they were related.
   
Chavez, speaking on television in Caracas, dove into the Emmanuel controversy, saying he did not know the FARC well enough to take them at their word, but had his doubts about Uribe's explanation.
   
If that were so, he said, "then we'd know (Emmanuel) was all right, that he was alive. But that would make FARC look really bad before the world, because it would be clear that its all a big lie, a manipulation."
   
Chavez volunteered to investigate the child's origin.
   
"We're ready to carry out the DNA test. I'm already calling Mrs. Clara" Gonzalez de Rojas, Emmanuel's grandmother, he said.
   
The team of international observers awaiting the hostage release in Villavicencio,  announced Monday it was suspending its efforts "temporarily" because of the current "delicate" situation.
   
The delegation includes representatives from seven countries and US film director Oliver Stone.
   
The FARC has been fighting to overthrow the government for decades and holds hundreds of hostages including Betancourt and three US contractors whose plane was shot down in 2003.
   
The hostage handover had been due to take place in the 310,000-square-kilometer (120,000-square-mile) wilderness of central and southeastern Colombia, where there are few roads but numerous landing strips used by drug traffickers.
   

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