Ex-Colombian minister escapes after 6 years hostage

BOGOTA, Jan 6 (Reuters) A former Colombian government minister kidnapped by leftist rebels in 2000 said he escaped during an army attack on his secret jungle prison and hid in the wilderness for five days before being found.

Former Development Minister Fernando Araujo said in a statement yesterday he ran from the camp when army helicopters fired at his captors in the northern part of the country. He was found by an army patrol and reunited with his family yesterday.

Araujo, who appeared thin but smiling, was among 62 hostages that the government wants to swap for leftist rebels held in government jails.

''I ask God that the other kidnap victims be freed soon,'' he said in a television interview.

Araujo was kidnapped by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, while jogging in the Caribbean resort city of Cartagena in December 2000. He had been former President Andres Pastrana's development minister.

The military operation, in which a soldier and six guerrillas were killed, came less than three months after President Alvaro Uribe ordered the army to rescue hostages.

The order followed the October explosion of a car bomb in the parking lot of a military university in Bogota, which was blamed on the FARC, which says it fights to close the gap between rich and poor in the Andean country.

''This is an important success for the government, but their are still plenty of other hostages out there,'' said political commentator Ricardo Avila.

They include Ingrid Betancourt, who was captured during her 2002 presidential campaign, and three US defense contractors kidnapped in 2003.

Uribe won re-election in a landslide last year based on his efforts to quash the 17,000-member rebel army, which was born in the 1960s aiming to close the gap between rich and poor in the Andean country but now funds itself with Colombia's multibillion-dollar cocaine trade.

REUTERS SP HS0846