Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez prepared to send planes and helicopters into neighboring Colombia to pick up three hostages who have been held for years by leftist rebels.
The hostages' release would be the most important in the Colombian conflict since 2001, when the FARC freed some 300 soldiers and police officers it had captured and held.
Chavez said on Wednesday that he hoped the hostages - including a mother and her young son - could be on Venezuelan soil by sundown yesterday, while the international Red Cross said the release could take a few days.
Colombia's largest rebel group announced last week that it would unilaterally hand over the three hostages to Chavez, demonstrating the guerrillas' affinity for the socialist leader.
The release would be an international boon for Chavez, enabling the self-styled revolutionary to outshine Colombia's US-backed president, Alvaro Uribe - with whom his relations have grown hostile - on the Colombian leader's own turf.
The three hostages are former Colombian congresswoman Consuelo Gonzalez, Clara Rojas - an aide to former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt - and Rojas' young son, Emmanuel, reportedly born of a relationship with a rebel fighter.
Gonzalez and Rojas have spent about six years held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, while Emmanuel is thought to be about 3 years old.
Gonzalez's daughter, Maria Fernanda Perdomo, said she and other relatives planned to fly to Caracas yesterday in hopes of finally being reunited with her mother.
Colombia on Wednesday approved the mission proposed by Chavez. The plan was for Venezuelan aircraft marked with Red Cross insignia to fly to the central Colombian city of Villavicencio, about 75 km south of Bogota, and then take off in helicopters to meet the rebels and hostages at an unknown spot. The pilots would not be told exactly where they were going until they are in the air, for security reasons, Chavez said.
Source: China Daily/Agencies
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