Ingrid Betancourt was running for the presidency of Colombia when she was kidnapped in 2002. The French-Colombian citizen was to spend six years as a hostage of the FARC guerrilla group in the forests of Colombia.
Betancourt, freed along with 14 other hostages this past June, visited Venezuela this week to personally thank Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, for working to gain her release. Venezuelanalysis reports today that Betancourt credited Chavez with sustaining the hostages' hopes for survival:
The voice of President Chavez was the voice that gave us hope even in the most terrible moments of captivity, the voice that allowed us to see the light at the end of the tunnel and believe that we could be freed soon," Betancourt said.
In 2007, President Chavez was asked by Colombia's President Uribe to negotiate with the FARC for the release of the hostages, But when it appeared that Chavez was going to be successful in obtaining the release of the hostages, President Uribe withdrew his request for Chavez's help.
Despite the withdrawal of his brief by Uribe, Chavez vowed to continue efforts to free the hostages, succeeding in gaining the release of 6 persons prior to Ingrid Betancourt's rescue by Colombian forces last June.
Uribe, along with the U.S. State Department and the western media, was later to use Chavez's hostage negotiations with the FARC against him, falsely claiming that Chavez supported the FARC.
Venezuelanalysis reports further:
Upon returning to France today, Betancourt held a press conference in which she reaffirmed the important role Chávez played in the hostage release process and that she never believed that he had "clandestine or wrongful relations with the FARC" because, first, "he knows the FARC and, second, because I understand his path, which attempts to understand processes that are not his own."
She also emphasized that Chávez "is a great democrat" who "has brought about a peaceful revolution in Venezuela" and highlighted that in the ten years of his presidency there have been more than ten electoral contests.
Betancourt has just completed an extensive tour of South American countries seeking assistance for continued negotiations to release the balance of the hundreds of hostages once held by the FARC.
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