FARC following ‘08 race

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.

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