Venezuelan Helicopters Arrive in Colombia to Pick Up Hostages
By VOA News
10 January 2008
Two Venezuelan helicopters have landed in Colombia to pick up two hostages held by Colombian leftist rebels for nearly six years.
A spokeswoman, Irma Alvarez, for the International Committee of the Red Cross announced earlier Thursday the aircraft had traveled to Colombia.
In televised remarks Wednesday, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said the rebels, known as the FARC, sent him the coordinates of where to find former vice presidential candidate Clara Rojas and former congresswoman Consuelo Gonzalez.
Colombian peace commissioner Luis Carlos Restrepo said officials will provide all necessary guarantees to ensure the success of the mission.
Late last year, Mr. Chavez sent aircraft carrying international dignitaries to Colombia to pick up the two women, after the FARC promised to release them to him or someone of his choosing. The deal fell apart after the FARC failed to relay the location of the hostages.
The rebels accused Colombia's government of sabotaging the handoff. Colombian President Alvaro Uribe said the FARC was lying.
The FARC initially said it would also free Rojas's three-year-old son, who was fathered by one of her captors.
President Uribe suggested the promised handoff did not happen because the FARC did not have the boy in its custody as it claimed.
Results of a Colombian DNA test and a second analysis by a laboratory in Spain have since confirmed that a boy who is in foster care in Bogota, is Rojas' child.
Rojas was abducted in February 2002. Gonzalez was captured in 2001.
Some information for this report was provided by AFP, AP and Reuters.
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