Colombia
on Thursday pardoned 23 left-wing rebels of the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), as the two sides negotiated
a prisoner swap. "We have decided to free 23 rebels,"
Interior Minister Sabas Pretelt told reporters. "These
persons were pardoned for the crime of rebellion ... and
agreed to renounce armed struggle."
Luis Carlos Restrepo, the government's
peace commissioner who leads negotiations with Colombia's
many rebel and paramilitary groups, called the move "a
new attempt to convince the guerrillas to agree to a humanitarian
accord."
President Alvaro Uribe announced in October
that he was ready to negotiate a prisoner exchange with
the country's largest rebel group.
On
November 8, FARC leadership rejected Uribe's proposal
to exchange 50 guerrillas for 59 hostages held by the
FARC: three Americans, 34 military and police officers
and 22 politicians, including Franco-Colombian Ingrid
Betancourt.
"This gesture toward reconciliation
is about hostages and their families," Restrepo said.
However, analysts said politics played
a part in the government's decision to free the prisoners.
"The government gave what it did
under pressure of public opinion and attitude polls,"
said Fernando Giraldo, a political scientist at Sergio
Arboleda University.
The announcement came two days after lawmakers
passed legislation that, if signed into law, would allow
Uribe to seek re-election. His term ends in August 2006.
The liberation of the rebels revived hopes
among relatives of the 1,600 hostages in the hands of
the FARC.
"These unilateral gestures open the
way to the long-awaited negotiation between the government
and the guerrillas," said Fabiola Perdomo, spokeswoman
for the families of kidnapped legislators.
She said she hoped the FARC would give
"a positive response as a way to restore confidence."
Yolanda Pulecio, the mother of former
Green Party presidential candidate Betancourt, held by
the FARC since February 23, 2002, hoped her daughter would
be home for Christmas, which will also be her daughter's
43rd birthday.
"There is no way to express the ordeal
we have been through," she said.
"We have been completely powerless."
At the same time, hostages' relatives
begged Uribe not to extradite FARC leader Simon Trinidad
to the United States, where he is wanted on drug trafficking
charges, for fear of upsetting the talks. Colombia's Supreme
Court authorized the extradition on November 24.
For months, the government and the rebels
have said each would like a prisoner swap, but could not
agree on the details.
The FARC demanded a demilitarized zone
in the south of Colombia in which to exchange prisoners,
arguing that the rebels needed to protect their negotiators.
The government refused.
"The government showed its flexibility
in reaching a humanitarian agreement and does not want
to appear to favor dialogue with paramilitaries while
excluding the rebels," said Alfredo Rangel, director
of the Security and Democracy Foundation.
Earlier this year, Uribe authorized talks
leading to the demobilization of Colombia's right-wing
paramilitary armies by the end of 2005.
The Marxist FARC was founded 40 years
ago by Manuel Marulanda and has 17,000 armed members organized
into 120 "fronts" across Colombia.
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