Editor’s note: Just days before Colombian troops tricked Marxist rebels into freeing former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, three American contractors and 11 Colombian hostages last week, freelance journalist Steve Salisbury spent three days in a guerrilla unit deep in Colombia’s wilderness. Here is a version of the story Mr. Salisbury filed, slightly updated to reflect subsequent events.
BOGOTA, Colombia | Marxist guerrillas of the FARC say they would be delighted to meet with both presumptive U.S. presidential candidates, Sen. John McCain, the Republican, and his Democratic rival, Sen. Barack Obama.
“There’s not much difference between McCain and Obama in the sense that they’re both serving the big capitalist establishment,” said a FARC political-military commissar in late June in the Sumapaz region of the Andean mountains, about 50 miles south of Bogota.
“But we would be open to talk with McCain, Obama, the United States government and many others, in an environment of friendliness and being respected, to clear away misconceptions and misunderstandings and to look to solve problems.”
Video: Freed U.S. hostages speak
Speaking on the condition of anonymity owing to what he said were security reasons, this 53-year-old commissar of a roughly light-battalion-sized unit, known as a “front,” called himself “N.”
Mr. Uribe has portrayed his aggressive military efforts against FARC as part of his “democratic security” strategy and cites the FARC’s inability to take and hold towns and highways as evidence of its success.
Guerrillas scoffed at the claims.
“We could always overrun a police post or village, if we want,” said a 25-year-old guerrilla accompanying N. “We have the capability to do it, but we choose not. Why take a village and have a lot of guerrilla and civilian casualties only to abandon it when the army masses to retake it? We can win it over by making it conscious of our cause.”
The FARC and the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrilla group are designated as “terrorist organizations” by the U.S. State Department, and both Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama concur with that designation. Neither candidate has expressed the slightest interest in meeting either group.
“That’s a shame, because we’re not terrorists. They don’t know the complete story and our side of it,” said N.
Guerrillas said they considered the Americans (since freed with Mrs. Betancourt) to be prisoners of war, and some suggested Mr. McCain’s experience as a POW could give him perspective on a proposed humanitarian exchange of jailed FARC guerrillas for their “political” hostages.
Guerrillas at the time said they held 37 “political hostages.” If accurate, they would now hold 22 hostages.
They hold hundreds of other hostages, which the government claims are for ransom payments.
Some guerrillas also said Mr. Obama’s African ancestry might make him sympathetic to the idea of a humanitarian exchange, because of America’s historical experience with slavery.
N sputtered at reports that the health of Mrs. Betancourt was failing. “Ingrid is in good health, and so are the Americans,” he said. He added that they were well fed.
He didn’t seem to think they looked unhealthy in videotapes released last year, in contrast to Colombian, American and French officials who said the hostages looked emaciated and haggard.
Guerrillas said that’s how a person often looks in the rigors of the jungle.
At the time, the FARC was offering to release its political hostages within 45 days if the government demilitarized the small towns of Pradera and Florida in western Colombia as safe havens for talks with the group, and if all jailed guerrillas were freed and returned to FARC ranks.
Guerrilla prisoners include two inmates in U.S. prisons.
Mr. Uribe says he will not free guerrillas convicted of heinous crimes, nor permit any released guerrillas to return to the FARC.
Mr. Uribe also said there can be no repeat of the “Distension Zone” - an area about the size of Switzerland that Mr. Uribe’s predecessor, Andres Pastrana, ceded for more than three years to the FARC for ill-fated peace talks that collapsed in 2002.
Mr. Uribe cited reports the FARC used the Distension Zone as a strategic corridor to refortify itself while carrying out drug-trafficking, killings, kidnapping and extortion with impunity.
“Uribe is distorting,” complained N. “He gave an ’encounter zone’ to the paramilitaries for talks. And look what Uribe did to them - his friends who organized support for his presidential campaigns? He extradited most of their top leaders to the United States when it served his purposes. So how can we trust him?”
Mr. Uribe denies he was friends with any paramilitaries.
N was referring to outlawed vigilante groups initially formed to battle guerillas, but many degenerated into death squads and drug-trafficking units. They have been dismantled under Mr. Uribe, with some senior members jailed under lenient terms, human rights groups say.
The guerrillas acknowledged that the towns of Pradera and Florida could have strategic value, but they rejected Mr. Uribe’s counterproposal to hold talks in a much smaller area away from population centers, saying they could be surrounded by the army.
“We are willing to talk with Uribe,” said N. “We know that as long as Americans are being held, Uribe can use that as a pretext to ask the United States for more money to fight the FARC. But we have a duty to try to free our comrades and not forget them.”
Mr. Uribe said the hostage cases are heart-rending, but that he must not sacrifice the national interest.
N said that it is in Colombia’s interest for the FARC to seize power, create a communist state tailored to Colombia´s own particular circumstances and push for similar Marxist governments in other South American countries.
“The FARC has fought for 44 years and can fight on as long as it takes,” said N. But he added that drinking coffee with Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama wouldn’t hurt in the search for common ground.
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