VILLAVICENCIO, Colombia — A mission to retrieve three rebel-held hostages from the jungles was on standby Saturday, with observers from eight countries, including flimmaker Oliver Stone, waiting for the guerrillas to give the pickup coordinates to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
Flanked by Stone and wearing the red beret from his paratrooper days, Chavez dispatched two helicopters Friday to this central Colombian city where they’re now idled.
Colombia’s U.S.-allied government agreed to allow the helicopters into its territory to pick up former congresswoman Consuelo Gonzalez, hostage Clara Rojas and her young son, Emmanuel, the result of a relationship with a guerrilla father.
The women have been held captive by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, for about six years.
But family members were still waiting Saturday for the one detail on which the mission hinges: the exact location in a France-size section of Colombia’s eastern jungle where the hostages will be fetched.
“We still do not have the coordinates from the FARC,” said Yves Heller, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, which is coordinating the mission.
Brazilian observer Marco Aurelio Garcia said the delegates expect to depart to pick up the hostages “at the latest (Sunday) morning.”
The FARC rebels announced this month they would release the three hostages to Chavez in appreciation of his attempts to broker a wider swap of 44 hostages — including three U.S. defense contractors — for hundreds of jailed rebels.
