Post by RedFlag32 on Jan 2, 2008 18:45:28 GMT
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Chávez’s Promised Hostage Release Fizzles, His Second Major Setback in Weeks
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
Published: January 2, 2008
RIO de JANEIRO — Last week, Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez, seemed on
the verge of one of his biggest triumphs to date. Now, amid renewed acrimony
with the Colombian leader, Álvaro Uribe, he is staring at his second major
political defeat in just over a month.
Using his credibility as a former rebel leader, Mr. Chávez orchestrated a
plan to release three hostages being held for years in the jungle by a
Colombian guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia,
known as the FARC.
Bristling with confidence, he assembled his allies in Latin America,
including the former Argentine president, Néstor Kirchner, to witness a
breakthrough in the decades-old conflict between the Colombian government
and the FARC. The movie director Oliver Stone was part of a multinational
group of observers that included diplomats from seven countries, including
France and Switzerland.
Then on Monday, Mr. Chávez’s showman moment seemed to turn from
history-making success into his latest failure.
For reasons that remain unclear, the FARC refused for four days to give the
exact location of the hostages to Venezuelan helicopter pilots. Mr. Chávez
read a letter from the rebel group late Monday that said the promised
security conditions had not been met.
“This is an important defeat for Hugo Chávez’s regional agenda to promote
his Bolivarian revolution and utilize his contacts with armed groups to win
political influence,” said Román Ortiz, the director of security and
post-conflict for the Ideas for Peace Foundation, a Bogotá research
institute focused on Colombia’s armed conflict.
A successful mission would have been likely to have embarrassed Mr. Uribe,
a conservative who has made little progress in negotiating the release of
any of the several hundred hostages held in jungle camps, some for nearly a
decade. Mr. Uribe has been skeptical of Mr. Chávez’s attempts to spread his
Socialist ideology across the continent.
At the same time, the operation would have helped Mr. Chávez bounce back
from a narrow defeat in a referendum early last month on a proposal that
would have tightened his grip on power. For several days, at least, Mr.
Chávez and Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, also
managed to divert attention from the brewing scandal involving a suitcase
filled with $800,000 in cash believed to be a secret Venezuelan donation to
her campaign.
Mrs. Kirchner dispatched her husband to Colombia, and several other
countries joined in a scramble to claim credit for helping to break
the impasse in the only armed conflict in the Western hemisphere.
But the FARC, which appeared to want to help Mr. Chávez while showing up
Mr. Uribe, did not cooperate.
“Clearly, Chávez did provide the best chance for making some progress, but
it wasn’t enough,” said Michael Shifter, a vice president at the
Inter-American Dialogue, a policy group in Washington. “In the end, the
distrust that the FARC felt for the Colombian government trumped any good
feelings they felt for Chávez.”
Mr. Uribe accused the FARC of lying about its reasons for scuttling the
promised transfers, even suggesting that the rebels did not have one of the
three hostages, a 3-year-old boy named Emmanuel who was born in captivity to
a rebel soldier and Clara Rojas, another of the hostages. Ms. Rojas and
Consuelo González were to have been delivered with the boy to the
Venezuelans.
Hopes ran high that the transfer of the three hostages would lead to
wider prisoner exchanges for more of the 700 hostages reportedly still
in guerrilla hands. They are believed to include a former Colombian
presidential candidate, Ingrid Betancourt, a dual French-Colombian
citizen kidnapped in 2002.
France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has been lobbying for Ms. Betancourt’s
release since videos and photos were seized late last month that apparently
showed her alive. The materials also appeared to show that three American
contractors, Thomas Howes, Marc Gonsalves and Keith Stansell, who were
captured in 2003 when their plane went down in the Colombian jungle, were
alive as well.
Now the failed mission has exposed Mr. Chávez to criticism of misplaced
priorities. As he worked to mediate the release of hostages in Colombia, in
Venezuela kidnappings are spiraling. Some estimates show that Venezuela has
more abductions per capita than Colombia now, but the Venezuelan government
has done little to tackle the problem.
The breakdown in the deal with the FARC led to a new round of harsh
accusations between Mr. Chávez and Mr. Uribe. Mr. Chávez said he had
“plenty of reasons to doubt Uribe’s team and their analysis and hypotheses.”
He accused Mr. Uribe of trying to “dynamite” the operation, a claim
Mr. Uribe denied.
Jenny Carolina González contributed reporting from Bogotá.
Chávez’s Promised Hostage Release Fizzles, His Second Major Setback in Weeks
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
Published: January 2, 2008
RIO de JANEIRO — Last week, Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez, seemed on
the verge of one of his biggest triumphs to date. Now, amid renewed acrimony
with the Colombian leader, Álvaro Uribe, he is staring at his second major
political defeat in just over a month.
Using his credibility as a former rebel leader, Mr. Chávez orchestrated a
plan to release three hostages being held for years in the jungle by a
Colombian guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia,
known as the FARC.
Bristling with confidence, he assembled his allies in Latin America,
including the former Argentine president, Néstor Kirchner, to witness a
breakthrough in the decades-old conflict between the Colombian government
and the FARC. The movie director Oliver Stone was part of a multinational
group of observers that included diplomats from seven countries, including
France and Switzerland.
Then on Monday, Mr. Chávez’s showman moment seemed to turn from
history-making success into his latest failure.
For reasons that remain unclear, the FARC refused for four days to give the
exact location of the hostages to Venezuelan helicopter pilots. Mr. Chávez
read a letter from the rebel group late Monday that said the promised
security conditions had not been met.
“This is an important defeat for Hugo Chávez’s regional agenda to promote
his Bolivarian revolution and utilize his contacts with armed groups to win
political influence,” said Román Ortiz, the director of security and
post-conflict for the Ideas for Peace Foundation, a Bogotá research
institute focused on Colombia’s armed conflict.
A successful mission would have been likely to have embarrassed Mr. Uribe,
a conservative who has made little progress in negotiating the release of
any of the several hundred hostages held in jungle camps, some for nearly a
decade. Mr. Uribe has been skeptical of Mr. Chávez’s attempts to spread his
Socialist ideology across the continent.
At the same time, the operation would have helped Mr. Chávez bounce back
from a narrow defeat in a referendum early last month on a proposal that
would have tightened his grip on power. For several days, at least, Mr.
Chávez and Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, also
managed to divert attention from the brewing scandal involving a suitcase
filled with $800,000 in cash believed to be a secret Venezuelan donation to
her campaign.
Mrs. Kirchner dispatched her husband to Colombia, and several other
countries joined in a scramble to claim credit for helping to break
the impasse in the only armed conflict in the Western hemisphere.
But the FARC, which appeared to want to help Mr. Chávez while showing up
Mr. Uribe, did not cooperate.
“Clearly, Chávez did provide the best chance for making some progress, but
it wasn’t enough,” said Michael Shifter, a vice president at the
Inter-American Dialogue, a policy group in Washington. “In the end, the
distrust that the FARC felt for the Colombian government trumped any good
feelings they felt for Chávez.”
Mr. Uribe accused the FARC of lying about its reasons for scuttling the
promised transfers, even suggesting that the rebels did not have one of the
three hostages, a 3-year-old boy named Emmanuel who was born in captivity to
a rebel soldier and Clara Rojas, another of the hostages. Ms. Rojas and
Consuelo González were to have been delivered with the boy to the
Venezuelans.
Hopes ran high that the transfer of the three hostages would lead to
wider prisoner exchanges for more of the 700 hostages reportedly still
in guerrilla hands. They are believed to include a former Colombian
presidential candidate, Ingrid Betancourt, a dual French-Colombian
citizen kidnapped in 2002.
France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has been lobbying for Ms. Betancourt’s
release since videos and photos were seized late last month that apparently
showed her alive. The materials also appeared to show that three American
contractors, Thomas Howes, Marc Gonsalves and Keith Stansell, who were
captured in 2003 when their plane went down in the Colombian jungle, were
alive as well.
Now the failed mission has exposed Mr. Chávez to criticism of misplaced
priorities. As he worked to mediate the release of hostages in Colombia, in
Venezuela kidnappings are spiraling. Some estimates show that Venezuela has
more abductions per capita than Colombia now, but the Venezuelan government
has done little to tackle the problem.
The breakdown in the deal with the FARC led to a new round of harsh
accusations between Mr. Chávez and Mr. Uribe. Mr. Chávez said he had
“plenty of reasons to doubt Uribe’s team and their analysis and hypotheses.”
He accused Mr. Uribe of trying to “dynamite” the operation, a claim
Mr. Uribe denied.
Jenny Carolina González contributed reporting from Bogotá.