¿De verdad puede Chávez lograr la paz con narcoterroristas?

December 27, 2007 (LPAC)--Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called a press conference yesterday morning, to announce that his government had worked out elaborate arrangements with the Colombian narcoterrorist FARC--which is the country's leading cocaine cartel--for the imminent release of two women hostages and a child born in captivity, should the Colombian government accept, which it quickly did. Venezuelan Vice Foreign Minister Rodolfo Sanz proudly announced today that the timing of the release "is the exclusive competence and authority of President Hugo Chavez."

The operation is being staged in grandstand fashion, with Chavez suggesting that the next step should be the opening of "peace talks" with the FARC--with himself at the center. As welcome as the release of any of the hostages held in their jungle concentration camps is, the Chavez-FARC operation functions, at the very least, as a distraction and an attempt to change the region's agenda, away from the urgent task of replacing the global financial system. At worst, it will play into the long-standing British policy of legitimizing and granting de facto recognition to the FARC cartel, destabilizing Colombia itself, and becoming a major step in the direction of national and regional disintegration.

The scheme, as announced, is that a Venezuelan transport airplane and two helicopters, painted with Red Cross insignia for the occasion, will fly representatives of the Red Cross and seven countries serving as "guarantors," plus media, into Villavicencio, Colombia. There, the FARC is to provide the helicopter pilots with coordinates of where in the jungle the hostages are to be released. They are then to be flown to Venezuela, to be received by Chavez, personally.

The guarantors for the operation now assembling in Caracas, are former Argentine President Nestor Kirchner; a top aide of Brazilian President Lula da Silva, Marco Aurelio Garcia; Bolivia's Vice Minister of Coordination with Social Movements, Sacha Llorenti; a former minister sent by Ecuador's Rafael Correa; the Ambassadors of France and Cuba to Venezuela; and a former Interior Minister of Venezuela. One representative of the Colombian government will join them.

To be released are Clara Rojas, a Vice Presidential candidate kidnapped in February 2002 along with her Presidential running mate, French-Colombian Ingrid Betancourt; Rojas's three year old son; and former Senator Consuelo Gonzalez de Perdomo, held since September 2001. Dozens of other hostages are held by the FARC.