Colombia hostages plead for freedom in video

BOGOTA - In a video released by their rebel captors, Colombian lawmakers held hostage for more than four years pleaded with President Alvaro Uribe to negotiate with leftist guerrillas to secure their release.

The recording broadcast on local television was the latest from the 12 provincial lawmakers since their kidnapping in 2002 by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or Farc, the largest rebel group in Colombia's four-decade conflict.

Farc wants Uribe to withdraw troops from two municipalities to start an exchange of rebel prisoners for 62 hostages, including three US contract workers and Colombian-French national Ingrid Betancourt, a former presidential candidate.

With sheets pinned up behind them to disguise their whereabouts, the lawmakers read from notes greeting family members and urging the government to reach an agreement.

"I urge President Uribe and the Farc leadership to keep from making declarations to the media without showing a real willingness to reach a humanitarian exchange, with acts and dialogue," said Ramiro Echeverry, wearing a black sweater and a crucifix around his neck.

The release of Farc hostages is one of the more sensitive areas Uribe must tackle after re-election in May thanks mostly to his tough security policies helping to reduce the country's once soaring levels of violence.

Local television showed families of the kidnapped men in Cali wiping away tears and hugging children as they watched the videos, the first of the hostages in more than six months.

The kidnapping came just before Uribe, a Washington ally who has received millions in US aid, was first elected on a promise he would smash Latin America's oldest insurgency and attack Colombia's vast cocaine trade.

Uribe has accepted a proposal by European governments to break the deadlock over the hostages. But the government and the Farc disagree over the demilitarised area and Uribe wants guarantees the Farc will not use the zone to regroup.

"The national government reiterates its willingness to reach a humanitarian accord and a peace agreement with the Farc," the Uribe administration said in a statement.

Guerrillas snatched the provincial lawmakers in Cali in 2002 by pretending to be police evacuating a government building during a bomb threat.

Kidnapping, crime and violence has dropped as Uribe hiked military spending and sent troops to push back the Farc and reclaim urban areas and highways abandoned by the state.

But the Farc still holds more than 800 hostages, including politicians, police and soldiers, in secret camps. Thousands are killed and forced from their homes each year by a conflict that has cost 40,000 lives in the last decade.

- REUTERS