Word: colombians
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...Richardson, a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations who has extensive experience negotiating the release of U.S. prisoners around the world. They convinced Richardson to fly south over the weekend and explore the possibilities of exchanging Stansell, Howes and Gonsalves for captured rebels. After conferring in Bogota with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and then in Caracas with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez - a FARC sympathizer who has helped broker freedom for other guerrilla captives - Richardson urged patience. "While I believe this initial trip was successful," he told reporters, "the process of freeing the hostages won't happen quickly...
...while the State Department helped coordinate Richardson's trip, the effort still stands in sharp contrast to the crusade that French President Nicolas Sarkozy is waging for the release of another FARC hostage, former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, who has dual French-Colombian citizenship and has often been held alongside the Americans. Sarkozy has sent a humanitarian mission to Colombia to gain access to the ill and emaciated Betancourt, 46, who was abducted in 2002. She "is in danger of imminent death," Sarkozy warned in a French TV broadcast aired in Colombia. "You who lead the FARC, you have...
...knocked the FARC back on its heels. The rebels have seen their ranks of almost 20,000 fighters halved in the past five years, according to U.S. military intelligence, while their morale, territorial control and command structure are waning. "Each day the FARC is a less viable force," says Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos. "They have scant popular support." Indeed, while Uribe enjoys an 84% approval rating, tens of thousands of Colombians have staged marches this year condemning the guerrillas...
...that climate, there has been guarded hope that the FARC wants to discuss the release of the Americans and its more than 700 Colombian military, police and civilian hostages. U.S. Representative Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, who is involved with the campaign to free the Americans, says, "The FARC seems engaged on this issue for the first time ever." Since the start of the year, the group has handed six hostages - including a Colombian congresswoman and a former vice-presidential candidate - over to Chavez. But Colombia now accuses Chavez of supporting the FARC financially. (He denies...
...Stansell, Gonsalves and Howes have children in the U.S. Howes, from Massachusetts, has eased his depression by adopting a stray dog. Gonsalves, of Connecticut, spends his days lifting makeshift weights and reading a Spanish Bible. The men cannot receive letters but do hear news of their families broadcast on Colombian radio...