Venezuela's Chavez aims for Colombia hostage triumph
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By Frank Jack Daniel
CARACAS, Dec 28 (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez plans to send aircraft into Colombia on Friday to pick up three hostages from Marxist rebels and score a diplomatic victory after recent setbacks for his socialist revolution.
Despite recently telling Chavez to stay out of talks with guerrilla leaders, Colombia's conservative government this week gave him permission to send a convoy of planes and helicopters onto its soil to collect the hostages, including a former vice presidential candidate and her son, born in a rebel camp.
Chavez said the first helicopters would fly into Colombia on Friday afternoon. "It is the operation's advance party," he told reporters on Thursday night.
It was not clear, however, when the hostages would be handed over.
The Venezuelan helicopters will first fly to the central Colombian town of Villavicencio and from there to a still unknown meeting point to pick up the captives, but rough terrain and poor weather conditions could delay the operation.
Guerrilla leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, hold hundreds of hostages but agreed to hand over three of them to Chavez in a move that could help pave the way for the release of other high-profile captives in exchange for rebels in Colombian jails.
It would also give Chavez a significant political victory.
The anti-American firebrand leads a growing leftist bloc in South America and uses his OPEC nation's oil revenues to support allies in the region.
But he suffered a major defeat in his drive for a socialist revolution in Venezuela when voters earlier this month rejected a series of reforms that would have given him wide new powers and allowed him to run for reelection indefinitely.
Chavez's standing abroad has also been hit by fierce disputes with Colombia's conservative President Alvaro Uribe over the hostage talks and with Spain's King Juan Carlos, who publicly told him to "shut up" at summit meeting in November.
Delivering a breakthrough in Colombia's hostage crisis would repair some of that damage and Chavez has brought in several foreign envoys, including former Argentine President Nestor Kirchner, to witness the handover.
Tensions between the neighbors still run high, and Colombia said Venezuela only has until Sunday afternoon to rescue the hostages. Chavez said he was not aware of any time limit.
The three hostages are Clara Rojas, captured during her 2002 vice presidential campaign, former lawmaker Consuelo Gonzalez, snatched the year before, and Rojas' son Emmanuel, who was fathered by one of her guerrilla captors.
Emmanuel, aged 3 or 4, has come to symbolize the young victims of Colombia's long war.
Some of the hostages' relatives arrived in Caracas on Thursday to wait for their release and transfer to Venezuela, where Chavez is expected to receive them.
"I taken aback by everything that is happening around me right now, said Rojas' mother, Clara de Rojas. "I want them in my arms. As the moment draws closer I think I am dreaming and I need someone to pinch me," said de Rojas, who is also Emmanuel's grandmother, soon after landing in Venezuela.
The FARC took up arms four decades ago and says it is fighting for social justice, but it has increasingly used kidnapping and cocaine trafficking to finance its war. (Editing by Kieran Murray)
