BOGOTA—Colombia's government on Tuesday proposed direct talks with FARC guerrillas over releasing rebel hostages, including French-Colombian citizen Ingrid Betancourt and three U.S. contract workers held for more than five years.
The offer by Peace Commissioner Luis Carlos Restrepo emerged before he traveled to Paris to meet French President Nicolas Sarkozy to discuss help for hostage talks. Bogota is under heavy pressure to find a way to free FARC captives.
Excerpts from captured rebel videos of hostages in jungle hide-outs released by the government last week caused an outcry in Colombia and abroad over their plight. One clip showed Betancourt, held since 2002, looking thin and despondent.
President Alvaro Uribe recently ended efforts by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to mediate with the FARC over hostages, sparking a diplomatic spat. Chavez held initial talks with FARC delegates, but Uribe said he later broke with agreed protocol.
"I am willing to go wherever the FARC wants," Restrepo said. "We are responding to national and international clamor and it is time for this drama to end ... this is a priority."
Mauricio Lizcano, member of a Colombian congressional peace committee, said Restrepo would take to Paris a proposal that France send a delegate to any meeting with the FARC.
Sarkozy has declared freeing Betancourt a priority and is trying to reach a hostage deal with the FARC, Latin America's oldest insurgency, which is listed as a terrorist group by the U.S. government and Europe.
Attempts to negotiate a deal to swap nearly 50 hostages for jailed rebels have been stymied over FARC demands that Uribe demilitarize an area the size of New York City for talks. He refuses, saying that would allow the rebels to regroup.
Restrepo said the government had prepared a decree to enact legal procedures to free jailed rebels once an agreement was reached. But he said guerrilla commanders had yet to provide a list of names they want included in any deal.
The FARC—the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—has been weakened by Uribe's U.S.-backed security initiatives, but continues to fight from remote areas, financing its activities with profits from Colombia's cocaine trade.
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