Colombia orders hunt for hostages held by rebels

Bogota, May 19: Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has ordered the military on Friday to hunt for a French-Colombian national and three Americans held by leftist guerrillas after an escaped hostage said he saw them just weeks ago.

Uribe accused FARC guerrillas of holding former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, the three captured US contractors and hundreds of other kidnap victims in jungle hide-outs in conditions worse than concentration camps.

''Generals, we are going to rescue Ingrid Betancourt, we are not going to play about with these bandits,'' Uribe said at a public event, shaking his fist for emphasis.

''And the US Congress should have no doubt, because we are going to carry out a military rescue of the three North yesterday Americans held by the FARC.'' The news from the escaped hostage, police officer Jhon Frank Pinchao, was the first concrete detail about Betancourt and the three captured Americans since rebels released videos of them in 2003.

FARC guerrillas, fighting a four-decade conflict fueled by the cocaine trade, have kidnapped scores of police, soldiers and politicians for ransom or for political leverage.

Pinchao was found in the jungle by a police patrol after escaping from nine years in FARC captivity. He said he was held with a group of 13 hostages including Betancourt and the three Americans. They moved camps every few months and were often chained by their necks to stop them fleeing.

''The FARC concentration camps are crueler than the concentration camps of the Nazis,'' said Uribe.

The FARC the Spanish initials for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia captured Betancourt in 2002 while she was campaigning for president.

The Americans Thomas Howes, Marc Gonsalves and Keith Stansell were captured in 2003 after their surveillance plane crashed while spotting coca crops used to make cocaine.

International Help

French President Nicolas Sarkozy met with Betancourt's two children in Paris yesterday, where he said he would help seek her release. France has pressured Colombia in the past to seek a negotiated settlement with the FARC over the hostages.

''My fear and the reason why I did not sleep last night is that they will get him (Pinchao) to talk, that he will say where they are and they will send a military mission and Ingrid will be killed,'' Yolanda Pulecio, Betancourt's mother said in Bogota.

Uribe, whose cattle-ranching father was killed in a botched FARC kidnap attempt 20 years ago, has previously offered talks with the FARC and even considered exchanging hundreds of jailed rebels in return for the hostages.

But the rebels want Uribe to pull troops back from a rural area the size of New York City to initiate talks on exchanging around 60 key hostages for jailed rebels. Uribe says the FARC would use the area to regroup and rearm.

Violence and kidnapping have declined under Uribe, who has led a US-financed campaign to drive the rebels back into the jungle and retake towns once held by the FARC or by illegal paramilitaries established to combat the rebels.

Reuters>