BOGOTA (AFP) — Marxist FARC rebels have one hour to hand over a pair of high-profile hostages from the time two Venezuelan choppers land deep in the Colombian jungle, the defense ministry said after a botched handover attempt collapsed ten days ago.
"When (the helicopters) arrive at the location, they will wait an hour for the guerrillas to appear with the hostages. If they do not appear in one hour's time, the operation will be aborted," warned Colombia's top government official for the issue, Juan Manuel Santos.
He said the pilots had been given coordinates for the meet-up in a swathe of jungle between San Jose del Guaviare and El Retorno 400 km (248 miles) southeast of the capital. They were expected to pick up Clara Rojas, 44, and former lawmaker Consuelo Gonzalez, 57.
Two Venezuelan helicopters departed for Colombia at dawn, Irma Alvarez, a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), said in Caracas.
Later the white-and-orange choppers, emblazoned with the ICRC emblem, arrived in the small city of San Jose del Guaviare in southeastern Colombia about 1324 GMT. From there, they were to travel to the secret handover location in the jungle, top officials of both governments said.
Bogota ordered all other flights over the region suspended, and halted military operations in the area, officials said.
Santos said the two women captives could be with their families by nightfall.
An earlier handover attempt failed in late December amid dramatic revelations that rebels no longer had in their custody one of hostages slated for release -- a three-year-old boy born in captivity.
Leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has acted as a mediator in this case, said Wednesday he had finally received from Colombian rebels the coordinates of a secret spot where the boy's mother, Rojas, and former lawmaker Gonzalez were to be set free.
The handover is to take place in an area of southern Colombia rife with fighters from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and illegal coca plantations.
Confirming that Bogota had approved Chavez's new handover plan, Colombian peace commissioner Luis Carlos Restrepo said the two governments, which have had tense relations, were in close coordination this time around.
"There is a good spirit of collaboration between the two countries and we are now making progress on operational steps that will permit -- with the greatest speed --- the liberation" of the two women, Restrepo said Wednesday.
The two are part of a group of more than 40 hostages -- including Franco-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt and three US nationals -- that the FARC wants to exchange for 500 rebels held by the Colombian government.
Rojas was managing Betancourt's presidential campaign when rebels captured the two in February 2002. Gonzalez was captured in 2001.
Colombia was gripped in 2006 by reports that Rojas had given birth to a baby boy, Emmanuel, in a jungle camp, after an allegedly consensual relation with a guerrilla fighter.
The birth was first reported by a Colombian journalist, who cited the FARC's top commander, and later confirmed by an escaped hostage who said he had seen the boy.
In December, FARC offered to release Gonzalez, Rojas and her son to Chavez, who had been trying to mediate the hostage swap between Bogota and the rebels but was formally dropped from the role by President Alvaro Uribe in November.
With Bogota's grudging consent, Chavez choreographed an elaborate handover and on December 28, aircraft, journalists and international observers from seven countries including Switzerland and France flocked to Colombia.
But the handover stalled when the FARC failed to inform Chavez of the handover location, then collapsed on December 31 with Uribe's bombshell revelation that the boy was actually at a state-run orphanage in Bogota.
A suspected FARC go-between sought protection from Colombian police in late December, saying the FARC was threatening to kill him if he did not return a boy they had given him in 2005, who was subsequently seized by social services on suspicion of child abuse.
The tip enabled Colombian authorities to track down the boy, and DNA tests conducted in Colombia and Spain using samples from Rojas's mother and brother have confirmed that the youngster is indeed her son.
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