[NYTr] Chavez visit to France fuels hope about Colombia hostage

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

AP via USA Today - Nov 20, 2007
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-11-20-chavez-hostage_N.htm?csp=34


Chavez visit to France fuels hope about hostage

PARIS (AP) — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Tuesday that
Colombian rebels have promised to furnish proof by year's end that
former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt is alive.

Chavez spoke after a meeting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy
about Betancourt, who is part French and whose plight has fixated the
nation.

Betancourt, who was abducted in 2002, is being held by the FARC, or
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

"Ingrid is alive. I'm absolutely certain," Chavez told reporters.

Chavez, working as an intermediary, is trying to arrange a swap of
prisoners. He said when he arrived in Paris on Monday that he has "a
lot of faith that we're going to achieve the accord."

Chavez had a working lunch Tuesday with Sarkozy, who has made freeing
Betancourt a priority.

Betancourt's family — and France — want proof she is still alive.
Chavez said Tuesday that FARC commander Manuel Marulanda wrote to him
promising to furnish that proof "by the end of the year."

Chavez said Marulanda had said Betancourt "is being treated well."

"I trust in Marulanda's word," Chavez said.

The government of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has set a time limit
of no later than December for Chavez's efforts — signaling diminishing
patience with what many Colombians see as a public spectacle by
Venezuela's socialist president.

Betancourt was running for president when she was abducted from the
campaign trail in 2002 along with her campaign manager, Clara Rojas,
and spirited into the Colombian jungle. The last time Betancourt was
seen publicly was in a video statement in 2003.

Betancourt's relatives were also meeting with Sarkozy and Chavez on
Tuesday.

Chavez emerged as a negotiator in Colombia's long-running conflict in
part because FARC rebels express an affinity for his leftist ideals,
and because he has cordial ties with U.S.-allied Uribe, despite deep
ideological differences.

The FARC has demanded that two Colombian rebels imprisoned in the
United States be included in any prisoner swap.

One of them, Ricardo Palmera — or Simon Trinidad — is to be sentenced
by a judge in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday for the kidnapping of three
Americans in Colombia. Another, Nayibe "Sonia" Rojas, was convicted
this year by a U.S. court of exporting cocaine.

In an e-mail sent to news media on Monday, the FARC released the
transcript of an earlier interview with rebel Luciano Marin Arango,
better known by the nom de guerre Ivan Marquez, who met with Chavez on
Nov. 8.

In the interview, dated Nov. 9, Arango is quoted as saying: "While
Chavez is heading up this mediation, hope will stay alive."

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press.