Colombia: Medical mission for hostages OK'd

[Judi Lynn]

Source: MSNBC

Colombia: Medical mission for hostages OK'd
Aim is to treat hostages sick after years in jungle camps

MSNBC News Services
updated 41 minutes ago

BOGOTA, Colombia - Colombia's president said Tuesday he has agreed to a French request to let an international mission try to meet with hostages held by leftist rebels.

President Alvaro Uribe said Tuesday that the mission would try "to protect the deteriorating health of the hostages" held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

At least one of the hostages, French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt, is said to be gravely ill after six years in captivity.

Uribe, speaking after a conversation with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, said Colombia would halt military operations in the area once the mission provides coordinates where it will treat hostages who are sick after years in jungle camps.





Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23904451/

[Peace Patriot]

1. This follows Uribe's bombing of the first two hostages (that Hugo Chavez got released)

driving them back into the jungle on a 20 mile hike, back into captivity. Chavez managed to get them out later. Uribe, after inviting Chavez to negotiate hostage releases, then abruptly withdrew that request, with a lame excuse, as the first two hostages were in transit, in what appears to me now to have been a set-up--a trap--for Chavez from the beginning. Uribe further tried to sabotage the second release by arresting the FARC negotiators, who were in transit to Caracas with the "proof of life" documents. Chavez then got four more hostages released, at which point the U.S./Colombia bombed the location of the FARC hostage negotiator, Raul Reyes, mercilessly killing him and 24 others in their sleep, at a camp just inside the Ecuador border--on the eve of Ecuador President Rafael Correa's negotiated release of 12 more hostages, including Ingrid Betancourt.

So what Uribe is doing here is trying to, 1) steal the hostage release thunder from the leftist presidents of Venezuela, Ecuador and Argentina (who was also involved in those negotiations), while attempting to brand those presidents as "terrorist-lovers"--having put the hostages' lives at risk, numerous times over the last few months, for political gain; 2) draw the FARC guerrillas out in the open again, to track them and kill them--to up their "kill score" with the Bush Junta and justify more billions in Bush/U.S. military aid; and 3) seem like a peacemaker--for the sake of the U.S. Congress and the Colombia "free trade" deal (i.e., free fire zone against union organizers)--when in truth he and his government are mass murderers.

Uribe's in a tight spot. He promised his puppetmasters a disastrous Chavez hostage release scenario, with dead hostages. Chavez outfoxed him (likely with a phone call to the Colombian military) and got six hostages out alive. Then Uribe had the problem of an out-of-control peace process in the works--with many world leaders urging his cooperation for more hostage releases and the start of peace talks with the FARC. He had to use U.S. surveillance and bombs--and possibly U.S. aircraft and personnel--to stop that, by killing Raul Reyes--and this incurred the wrath of Ecuador's president Rafael Correa, and the approbrium of the entirety of Latin America. Recently, details came to light of the Colombian military killing innocent people and dressing them like FARC guerrillas--to up their "kill score" and impress Bush and the U.S. Congress-- rightwing paramilitaries closely tied to the Uribe government slitting the throats of children suspected of having leftist parents, and hunting down and assassinating people who had recently peacefully protested the rightwing death squads in Bogota.

Uribe's reputation in about that of Bush's, on the world stage. He is despised as a liar, a protector of murderers and a violator of international peace--after a shady early career as the go-to guy for the Medellin Cartel, and, more recently, seeking to amend the Colombian constitution once again, to stay in office. (Funny how the fascists accuse Chavez of this--but it is Uribe who is actually doing it--becoming "president for life." Chavez asked the voters to VOTE ON him running for a third term, and, when the voters declined to do so--amidst a total of 69 amendments, including equal rights for gays and women--he quietly acquiesced to their will. Uribe, on the other hand, is going to try to sneak it through the fascist-controlled legislature.)