Colombia's government and left-wing FARC guerrillas are the closest they have been to reaching an accord to release hostages held in secret camps as an initial step toward peace, said a former senator who acts as a contact between the two sides, according to Reutrers. President Alvaro Uribe, a key U.S. ally who has led a security crackdown on Latin America's longest insurgency, recently agreed to discuss a rebel demand to pull troops back from an area the size of New York City to facilitate talks. "The party is ready, the water, the swimming pool. Now it is a matter of how to get into the pool. Some put their feet in first, others need to be pushed," Alvaro Leyva, who has been a go-between for the talks, told Reuters on the weekend. "They can't miss this chance. We just have to keep on building trust," he said. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by its Spanish acronym FARC, wants the government to release jailed fighters in exchange for 62 key hostages, some held as long as eight years. They include three U.S. contract workers and Ingrid Betancourt, a French-Colombian national and former presidential candidate. The guerrillas, who number about 17,000, also want two key leaders held in the United States to be included in the exchange, a demand that could complicate negotiations. In a statement dated Monday, the FARC said its negotiators were ready to begin talks and waiting for the government to pull back troops from Florida and Pradera municipalities in southern Colombia. Between 1999 and 2002, Uribe's predecessor Andres Pastrana withdrew military forces from an area the size of Switzerland to initiate peace talks with the FARC. But the negotiations fell apart and the rebels used the space to regroup. Leyva, a former mining minister who briefly ran against Uribe in elections in May, has been involved in talks with other guerrilla movements, including current negotiations with the National Liberation Army, the Colombia's second-largest guerrilla group. Violence in Colombia has abated under Uribe, who has received millions of dollars in U.S. aid in his fight to push back the rebels and attack the cocaine trade that helps finance the conflict. But thousands are still killed or driven from their homes each year by the guerrilla war. The government and the rebels have recently exchanged a flurry of statements suggesting the two sides were edging toward talks. But previous failures have cast a shadow over the possibility the two sides will sit down and analysts warn any agreement to end the conflict is still far off. The release of hostages is a key challenge for Uribe since he was re-elected in May. Voters rewarded him for driving back rebels out of urban areas and key highways in his first term, but many Colombians now want progress in the peace talks. Uribe, whose father was killed by the FARC in a botched kidnapping, wants more guarantees the rebels will not try to take advantage of the demilitarized zone. But he appears more open to talks since his re-election. "If there is no humanitarian exchange, there will be no peace," Leyva said.
