Rebels reject Betancourt mission

[maddezmom]

Source: AP

BOGOTA, Colombia - Leaders of Colombia's main rebel group on Tuesday rejected a French medical mission that flew to Bogota to aid ailing hostage Ingrid Betancourt, a presidential candidate who was kidnapped six years ago.

The group said France had not coordinated with the rebels before its plane arrived.

"We don't respond to blackmail or media campaigns," the rebels said.

The communique from the ruling secretariat of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia was dated April 4, the day after a French government plane arrived in Bogota, carrying doctors and diplomats who hoped at least to see Betancourt, a French-Colombian citizen.

The statement noted that the group, known as the FARC, had unilaterally released six hostages earlier this year as a "gesture of generosity and political will." It called again on the Colombian government to grant a demilitarized zone where imprisoned rebels could be swapped for guerrilla-held hostages.



Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080408/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/colombia_rebel_hostages_4

[Peace Patriot]

1. Nice going, Bush! Ten 500 lb. U.S.-Bush "smart bombs," U.S. surveillance and

more than likely U.S. aircraft and personnel, were used last month, in the U.S.-Bush/Colombian bombing and raid in Ecuador to kill the chief FARC hostage negotiator, Raul Reyes, and 24 other people, in their sleep, on the eve of 12 more hostage releases, including Ingrid Betancourt, negotiated by the Presidents of Ecuador, Venezuela, Argentina and France. These unnecessary murders were deliberate sabotage of hostage release negotiations that were "very advanced," according to Ecuador's president, and almost started a war, because the U.S.-Bush/Colombia were bombing and invading Ecuador, where Reyes had set up a hostage release camp just inside the border. This U.S.-Bush-equipped attack on Ecuador's soil killed an Ecuadoran citizen and several visiting Mexican students (apparently there to participate in the humanitarian mission), as well as Reyes and the others.

Reyes had been the FARC hostage negotiator for six successful, unconditional hostage releases negotiated by President Chavez in the prior months, after Chavez was asked by Alvaro Uribe of Colombia to undertake negotiations with FARC. In that case, too, however, the U.S.-Bush either intervened at the last moment--pulling Uribe's puppet strings to abruptly withdraw the request to Chavez, and then bomb the location of the first two hostages as they were in transit to freedom in Venezuela (reported by the first two hostages), or had set the whole thing up to produce a disastrous diplomatic result for Chavez (dead hostages). I favor the latter explanation for Uribe's erratic behavior. I think he was part of a plot to entice Chavez into the the hostage negotiations, which were supposed to fail. They could then start slandering Chavez as a "terrorist-lover" (as they have done since, to both him and Ecuador's president). Chavez was successful, however--got a total of six hostages released--and that success could not be allowed to stand. It was a P.R. nightmare for the Bushites. So they deliberately targeted Raul Reyes--Chavez's contact, and the contact for the presidents of Ecuador, Argentina and France--and took him out.

Chavez's successful hostage negotiations were paving the way for a peaceful settlement of Colombia's 40+ year civil war--something that the Bushites do not want. They like war. They want war. War is their only foreign policy. And war is very, very lucrative and for the fascists in Colombia ($5.5 BILLION in U.S. military aid run through Bushite fingers).

FARC released six hostages without conditions--and in particular without a safe, demilitarized zone. So the U.S.-Bush/Colombia bombed the first hostages to be released, then slaughtered the chief FARC negotiator and 24 others, gratuitously--to stop the hostage negotiations. Is it any wonder now that FARC demands a safe zone for further releases? The U.S.-Bush/Colombia has shown extremely bad faith thus far. And this has been the history of the fascists in this civil war for 40+ years.

The last time the FARC tried to go legit, and enter the country's political process--in a peace negotiation that permitted them to demobilize, organize for elections and run for office--4,000 FARC political candidates and voters were gunned down by rightwing paramilitaries with close ties to the government. Why should they trust Uribe/Bush? Why should they release more hostages with no guarantee of their own safety (not to mention that of the hostages)? Once they release Betancourt, you can be sure that Uribe/Bush will unleash armageddon in the Colombian countryside to slaughter FARC members and all political opposition unrelated to FARC, which they have already been doing--with the torture and murders over the past five years of thousands of union leaders, small peasant farmers, political leftists, human rights workers and journalists.

Some DUers, who defend Uribe, say the FARC are criminals. Why are they kidnapping people? Why don't they just release all the hostages? But they never explain why there is a FARC--an armed leftist fighting force--in Colombia. It is not a choice that most of us would make--armed rebellion. It seems dinosauric, in South America--where leftist governments are getting elected all over the continent. But leftist political activity is not permitted in Colombia. Peaceful people who recently held a protest demonstration against the rightwing death squads in Colombia were murdered by those same death squads. You raise your head in Colombia--for a union, for good government, for fairness--and you are killed. Simple as that. That is why people have taken up arms, and committed crimes. (About a third of the FARC are women, by the way. That tells you something about the extremity of fascist oppression in Colombia--that so many women would be motivated to take up arms and live in the jungle as rebel soldiers).

This situation--Colombia's 40+ civil war--is made to order for Bushites, who profiteer from war, and are insanely greedy for oil. They want to restore global corporate predator control of the oil in Venezuela and Ecuador, and they are using the Colombia civil war, the hostage situation, the murderous, corrupt, failed "war on drugs," and all other means at their disposal (our tax dollars in USAID-NED and other budgets) to achieve that end. Next they will be using the unrest in Bolivia (an ally of Venezuela and Ecuador)--where white separatists want to split up the country (and take the rich gas/oil reserves with them)--as a strategic front in Oil War II: South America.

[Mudoria]

2. Nice going FARC on kidnapping her and holding her

hostage for so many years. With any luck these thugs will be eradicated from Colombia.

[AlphaCentauri]

3. I see how the media focus on 25% of the problem of Colombia and ignore the rest

drugs keep coming from Colombia and money goes back to the Colombian economy, why Uribe won't sign a peace deal with the FARC? because he already signed with the other side.

[Peace Patriot]

4. And what about the rightwing thugs in Colombia who are slaughtering union leaders,

small peasant farmers, political leftists, political protesters, human rights workers and journalists?

That was my point, above. This is a CIVIL WAR. You don't stop a civil war that has gone on for 40+ years by MORE killing! But you want "these thugs" to be "eradicated." The U.S.-Bush/Colombia is not confining itself to "these thugs"--they are using FARC as an excuse to kill thousands of innocent people, i.e., to "eradicate" the political opposition--a slaughter that just makes more leftist guerrilla fighters. And the U.S.-Bush/Colombia likes it this way. They MAKE MONEY from war. The Bush Junta has drained the U.S. treasury to the 7th generation ($10 TRILLION deficit) in a war for oil in the Middle East, and is dunning us for an additional $5.5 BILLION in military aid to Colombia, in what I believe is a war for oil in South America. War is profit to Bushites, and to their counterparts in Colombia. Profit! It has nothing to do with solving problems, with creating peace, with good government. Their unnecessary murder of Raul Reyes, in the bombing/raid into Ecuador, exposed their motives. They couldn't care less what happens to the hostages. They want war. So, who are the criminals? Who are the thugs? There is guilt on both sides, as to crimes committed--although AI has shown that most of the slaughter of union leaders (95%) is by the Colombian military and closely associated paramilitaries. Again, it's a civil war--a lot like the Spanish civil war--right vs. left, and in that case, too, the right prevented representative government. The right doesn't want representative government in Colombia, and they will keep killing thousands of innocent people to prevent it.

So, how would you end it? By "eradication"? You are just like Bush. He is "eradicating" thousands of INNOCENT people in Iraq in order to stop armed groups that oppose the U.S.-Bush occupation. Is it stopping them? No. And, even if it was, is it RIGHT? No. It does not solve problems. It makes more problems--very lucrative war profiteering problems. And you would go on "eradicating" people in Colombia...how long? Isn't 40+ years of bloodshed enough?