Better known for his trademark anti-U.S. tirades, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez takes on a more delicate role Friday when he tries to broker a deal to free hostages held by Colombia’s Marxist guerrillas.
Chavez steps into a bitter deadlock between President Alvaro Uribe, a U.S. ally popular for his hard-line stance against rebels, and Latin America’s oldest guerrilla group resisting attempts to end a 40-year conflict.
At stake in the talks in Bogota is the freedom of hundreds of kidnap victims wasting away in rebel jungle camps, including French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt snatched in 2002 and three U.S. contract workers captured a year later.
Chavez’s leftist credentials, strong ties to Cuba and growing regional influence have stirred hope for families of victims he can give the talks initiative a new jolt.
“The kidnappers say they admire Chavez. They might not obey him, but they do take note,” Betancourt’s husband, Juan Carlos Lecompte, said. “It’s the first time I see there could be a small light at the end of the tunnel.”
French President Nicolas Sarkozy is pushing for Betancourt’s release and has asked Uribe to free a top rebel leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, to foster talks.
He spoke with both Uribe and Chavez on Thursday, urging them to work for the release of hostages.
But Uribe and the FARC are entrenched in their positions and Chavez could struggle to find a deal that has eluded European governments, the Roman Catholic Church and families of politicians, police and soldiers held for as long as a decade.
Attempts at talks are stalemated over two rebel demands: a safe haven the size of New York City in southern Colombia for the exchange and the release of two rebels held in the United States before the FARC considers freeing its U.S. hostages.
Uribe, whose father was killed two decades ago in a botched FARC kidnapping, has spearheaded a U.S.-backed campaign to disarm paramilitaries and push the FARC back into the jungles. Cities and highways are safer and violence has eased.
‘Two unalterable positions’
While he initially accepted a proposal by France, Switzerland and Spain for a safe haven, Uribe refuses to pull back troops under FARC conditions, saying it would allow rebels to regroup and rearm.
“We have two unalterable positions. One is no demilitarized zone. This country demands a state presence, the people demand that they do not have to sleep in the countryside waiting for a guerrilla kidnapping,” Uribe said recently.
Raul Reyes, a top FARC leader, told an Argentine newspaper recently he welcomed Chavez’s involvement and said guerrillas would hold talks anywhere. But he insisted on a demilitarized zone and an exchange of hostages inside Colombia.
Demilitarization is a sensitive issue in Colombia. Uribe’s predecessor gave up a Switzerland-sized chunk of land for peace talks. After three years, negotiations collapsed with the government charging the FARC kept kidnapping and rearming.
“The great challenge for Chavez is to get each side to cede without appearing they have lost anything,” Alfredo Rangel, a security analyst at the Bogota think tank Security and Democracy, wrote in a recent column.
