CARACAS (AFP) — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez plans to speak Wednesday about the eagerly anticipated release of three hostages held by Colombian Marxist rebels, as the families anxiously wait for news.
Chavez, who has tried to mediate a possible prisoner exchange between the guerrillas and the Colombia government, will speak to reporters at 1530 GMT in Caracas to discuss "the process of freeing the three hostages," Information Minister William Lara said Tuesday.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) said on December 18 they would free former lawmaker Consuelo Gonzalez de Perdomo, 57; presidential campaign manager Clara Rojas, 44; and Emmanuel, 3, the son Rojas bore to a rebel in captivity.
FARC said the captives would be handed to Chavez or a representative of his choice, but doubts over the release had grown as the three remained in rebel hands.
A Venezuelan presidency official told AFP on condition of anonymity that the three would likely be freed "before the end of the year," but the daily Vea, which is close to the ruling party, said Monday that if no release came by Christmas the next opportunity might not be until January 6.
The announcement that Chavez would speak on the matter Wednesday brought joy and optimism to the mother of Clara Rojas in Bogota.
"I'm very happy. The moment seems to be approaching," Clara Gonzalez told Colombia's Radio Caracol.
"With this announcement we expect that it will be tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, at the very least we are getting close and I am supremely happy," said the 77-year-old Gonzalez.
Venezuelan authorities have remained mum about the process, refusing to release any information for fear of compromising the negotiations.
Chavez called his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy Tuesday night "to discuss the matter of the three hostages whose release has been announced by the FARC," according to the French presidency, which gave no further information about the conversation.
France is keenly interested in the fate of hostage Ingrid Betancourt, a dual French-Colombian national who was running for Colombia's presidency when she was kidnapped, along with her campaign manager Rojas, in February 2002.
But Carlos Holguin, Colombia's minister of justice and the interior, said that President Alvaro Uribe's government "has no information about the logistics of the release."
"We will continue waiting calmly and patiently President Chavez's announcement on the release. We will do all we can to bring the hostages back quickly," Holguin told Radio Caracol Tuesday.
Uribe had named Chavez in August a mediator in a possible swap of 45 high-profile hostages held by the rebels -- including Rojas, Betancourt and three American contractors -- for 500 FARC prisoners.
But Uribe stripped his Venezuelan counterpart of the role in November, accusing Chavez of breaking protocol by directly contacting a Colombian general.
Chavez, however, has continued to be involved in the effort to get some hostages freed.
The Venezuelan leader spent Christmas in a residence in the western state of Barinas, near the Colombian border, a region that is sometimes cited as a possible site for the release of the three hostages.
Betancourt's husband Juan Carlos Lecompte dropped 22,000 photographs of her two children from a small plane he rented and flew on the weekend over a Colombian jungle near Brazil where she is thought to be held.
Each photo was signed "for Ingrid from Juan Carlos." Betancourt turned 46 on Tuesday.
In her latest message to her family, made public in late November, Betancourt had said she had to resort to imagination to visualize the faces of her children, after almost six years apart.
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