Chavez plans FARC rebel talks over hostages

By Patrick Markey

BOGOTA (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Friday he planned to hold talks with Colombia's FARC guerrillas in Venezuela in an attempt to break a stalemate on freeing kidnap victims held for years by the Marxist rebels.

Left-winger Chavez steps into a bitter deadlock between President Alvaro Uribe, a U.S. ally popular for his hard-line stance against rebels, and Latin America's oldest guerrilla group resisting attempts to end a 40-year conflict.

The proposal fuels hope for a deal to free scores of hostages languishing in rebel jungle camps, including French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt, snatched in 2002, and three U.S. contract workers captured a year later.

"President Uribe has welcomed the idea I receive FARC representatives in Venezuela to talk over this matter," Chavez told reporters after a meeting with Uribe in Bogota. He did not give details when the talks would occur.

Chavez said he received direct communication from the FARC on Friday morning after he offered to act as a mediator between the guerrillas and Uribe's government. But the populist former paratroop commander did not give any details.

While Uribe has been a close White House ally whose country has received billions in U.S. military aid, Chavez has aggressively sought to counter Washington's influence in Latin America with a socialist approach, offering neighbors energy deals as part of his self-styled revolution.

But Uribe and Chavez have kept up ties, and the Venezuelan's leftist credentials, strong connections to Cuba and growing regional influence have stirred hope among families of victims he can give talks new energy.

"It's the first time I see there could be a small light at the end of the tunnel," Betancourt's husband, Juan Carlos Lecompte, said before Chavez's announcement.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is pushing for Betancourt's release and has asked Uribe to free a top rebel leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, to foster talks. Chavez said Sarkozy asked him in a phone call this week to try to secure proof from the FARC that Betancourt was still alive.

"They are going to open formal dialogue in Caracas for a while, but the exchange will still take place in Colombia," Pablo Casas, an analyst at Bogota's Security and Democracy think tank said of the planned talks. "The key point they will have to negotiate now is the where and when."

TOUGH ROAD AHEAD

Uribe, whose father was killed in a botched FARC kidnapping, has spearheaded a U.S.-backed campaign to disarm paramilitaries and push back the FARC, which is aided by cocaine trafficking. Cities and highways are now safer and violence has eased.

But Uribe and the FARC are entrenched in their positions and Chavez will be hard-pressed to reach a deal that has eluded European governments, the Roman Catholic Church and families of politicians, police and soldiers held for as long as a decade.

Attempts at talks are stalemated over two rebel demands: a safe haven the size of New York City in southern Colombia for the exchange and the release of two rebels held in the United States before the FARC considers freeing its U.S. hostages.

While he initially accepted a proposal by France, Switzerland and Spain for a safe haven, Uribe refuses to pull back troops under FARC conditions, saying it would allow rebels to regroup and rearm.

Raul Reyes, a top FARC leader, said recently he welcomed Chavez's involvement and said guerrillas would hold talks anywhere. But he insisted on a demilitarized zone and an exchange of hostages inside Colombia.