cowboy uribe disrupts FARC hostage release
VILLAVICENCIO, Colombia – The plan to secure the release of three hostages …crumbled on Monday after President Alvaro Uribe said that intelligence information suggests that the youngest of the captives — a 3-year-old boy — may have been released more than two years ago
The revelation came amid Venezuela’s accusations that Uribe’s government had been interfering with the hand-over plan, dubbed ”Operation Emmanuel,” after the alleged captive toddler.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez …said he received a letter from the rebels saying that military operations in the jungle region where they are hiding the hostages made the hand-off impossible.
‘Personally, I have reasons to doubt. Why precisely today, in Villavicencio, does the president make public a theory that the FARC are not holding Emmanuel?,” said Chávez on state television, according to The AP.
A dozen international observers — who had been waiting for days to be part of the mission to retrieve Rojas, 44, her son Emmanuel and Consuelo González, 57 — left Villavicencio on Monday.
”Shame on Colombia, shame on Uribe,” Oliver Stone, the American filmmaker, told The AP shortly before boarding one of three Venezuelan jets carrying the observers back to Caracas.
While Chávez adorned choppers in Red Cross insignia — a requirement imposed by Uribe’s government — and dispatched them under heavy media attention, Uribe seemed all but sidelined. He had been out of public sight for the past week, spending the holidays at his ranch in northern Colombia.
That changed Monday, when Uribe flew to Villavicencio donning a cowboy hat and made the shocking announcement about the boy.
