Colombian rebels to free 6 hostages

BOGOTA: A Colombian FARC rebel commander named six military and police captives the group pledged to free in the coming weeks and proposed a constitutional change to allow the exchange of jailed guerrillas for hostages.

Ivan Marquez, in a video released on Wednesday, called the upcoming release "an act of peace." The bearded commander, wearing olive-green fatigues and seated at a desk in what he said were the mountains of Colombia, is a member of the drug-funded group's seven-member governing secretariat.

The video was the latest in a series of peace messages from the nearly 50-year-old Latin American insurgent group since troops killed its leader late last year, and as President Juan Manuel Santos comes under pressure to seek an end to the war.

The six captives are some of the 11 members of the armed forces that the FARC the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia has held for more than a decade. It also holds about 300 civilians.

"The families of the prisoners of war want their loved ones to come home alive," Marquez said in his first recorded statement since 2007, when he appeared alongside Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez at the presidential palace in Caracas.

The group has suffered heavy military defeats in the past decade as a US-backed offensive hampers its ability to move easily across the Andean nation and a spy network helps the government capture or kill FARC commanders.

"It's not right that this group, which conducts terrorist acts and criminal activities like drug trafficking, continues to play with people's lives, with hostages with families, and then it puts on a publicity show, a political show," Defense Minister Juan Carlos Pinzon said in a statement.

"This makes no sense and has no justification." Colombia has continued to deal blows against the FARC's leadership and ability to operate since the US-funded offensive began a decade ago, but its guerrillas have changed tactics by fighting in smaller, more elusive units.

Marquez called on President Juan Manuel Santos to alter the constitution by obliging the government to free hundreds of captured FARC rebels in exchange for military and police hostages the group holds in jungle camps.

Copyright Reuters, 2012