Bogota, Colombia – A leader of Colombia’s largest leftist guerrilla group said the rebels were willing to discuss releasing 60 hostages, including three Americans, in exchange for scores of jailed fighters.
In past months, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, had rejected out of hand any negotiations with President Alvaro Uribe, whose beefed-up military has kept the 12,000-strong insurgency on the run for the last four years. But Uribe’s re-election by a landslide in May could be forcing the FARC to re-evaluate its position.
Raul Reyes, a spokesman for the FARC, said the group had “all the political will” to negotiate a humanitarian exchange, according to a transcript of an interview Thursday with Venezuelan based Telesur.
The government has for months been trying to secure the hostages’ release as a confidence-building first step toward a more comprehensive peace agreement.
Colombia’s vice president Francisco Santos promised to study Reyes’ comment in detail but cautioned about reading too much into his words.
“A complex process like this requires prudence – it can’t be handled with declarations before microphones,” Santos said.
The FARC is believed to be holding as many as 60 hostages, including three U.S. defense department contractors who were captured in February 2003 after their small plane crashed into a rebel stronghold while on an anti-drug mission.
The FARC has been trying to overthrow the government for more than four decades, its campaign of violence largely restricted to Colombia’s vast countryside.
In an attack Friday likely perpetrated by the FARC, a Colombian navy lieutenant and eight servicemen were killed when the truck they were traveling in was ambushed by rebels. It was one of the deadliest attacks in months.
The troops were on a routine patrol when the rebels exploded a pipe bomb as they were driving near the town of Montes de Maria, 280 miles north of Bogota, said Lt. Nasly Salcedo, a spokeswoman for the navy’s Caribbean command center in Cartagena. There were no survivors.
