Chavez Receives Freed FARC Prisoners

GRANMA
February 28,2008

Chavez Receives Freed FARC Prisoners
JUAN ANTONIO BORREGO

CARACAS.- Former Colombian legislators released Tuesday by the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), were received with
military honors Wednesday night at Miraflores Presidential Palace in
Caracas by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Minutes before, the ex-hostages Gloria Polanco, Orlando Beltran, Luis
Eladio Perez and Jorge Gechem had a moving reunion with their
relatives at the Simon Bolivar International Airport near the
capital.

The release of the Colombian politicians took place Tuesday at a
locale in the jungle zone of San Jose del Guaviare, when a commando
of the insurgent group delivered them to a delegation comprised of
Venezuela's Interior and Justice Minister Ramon Rodriguez Chacin,
Colombian Senator Piedad Cordova and representatives of the
International Red Cross.

>From the point of delivery, Venezuelan Air Force helicopters
participating in the "Path to Peace" operation, transported the
Colombians to the Santo Domingo base in the state of Tachira in the
Venezuelan Andes, where a plane awaited them for travel to Caracas.

"The release of the former Congress people is an accomplishment of
humanitarian persistence and President Hugo Chavez and Sen. Cordova's
sincere concern for peace in Colombia," stated a FARC communiqu? made
public on Wednesday.

However, in their text the guerrilla organization demands the
Colombian military withdrawal for 45 days "with the FARC and the
international community as guarantors" of the municipalities of
Pradera and Florida "to negotiate with the government the release of
the guerrillas [held by the government] and the prisoners of war in
the hands of the FARC."