Release of Journalists in Colombia Urged

Release of Journalists in Colombia Urged

www.timesdaily.com ANDREW SELSKY Associated Press Writer January 31. 2003 4:15PM

Colombian soldiers manage a roadblock at the entrance of Saravena, in the Arauca state on the eastern border with Venezuela, Friday, Jan. 31, 2003. President Alvaro Uribe has made Arauca the showcase of his attempts to put Colombia in order. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC, and the National Liberation Army, ELN, are battling the army for control of Arauca's oil-rich plains. U.S. Army special forces troops arrived in Arauca this month to train Colombian soldiers, angering the rebels. Twoforeign journalists, American photographer Scott Dalton and British reporter Ruth Morris, were kidnapped by the ELN, some 20 miles south of Saravena ten days ago. (AP Photo/Javier Galeano)

President Alvaro Uribe took a hard line Friday against rebels holding two foreign journalists, insisting they be freed without fanfare and warning that government troops would not hold back because of the hostages.

Earlier Friday, a humanitarian commission requested by the rebels aborted its mission to retrieve hostages Scott Dalton, 34, and Ruth Morris, 35, in Arauca state, a lawless area of eastern Colombia.

Dalton, a photographer from Conroe, Texas, and Morris, a Briton raised in southern California, were kidnapped by the National Liberation Army on Jan. 21 while on assignment for the Los Angeles Times. They are the first foreign journalists abducted in Colombia's four-decade-long war.

The kidnapping sent a shock wave through the foreign press corps in Colombia, and has been widely covered by the Colombian media. Uribe, while he said he longs for Dalton and Morris to be freed, also recalled the thousands of Colombians who have been abducted by rebels for ransom.

Uribe, speaking at a ceremony at the Tres Esquinas military base in southern Colombia, said the insurgents were hypocrites for seeking the involvement of a humanitarian commission.

"In kidnapping middle-class Colombians, in mistreating our countrymen, these groups have no limits," Uribe snapped. "Humanitarian considerations have no weight at all when they drive families to ruin by forcing them to pay ransoms."

Uribe's father was killed by another rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, in 1983 during an apparent kidnapping attempt.

The rebels, Uribe charged, were planning to hand over Dalton and Morris to try to gain respectability abroad.

"They're afraid of international public opinion," the president said. "They fear the Los Angeles Times ... but they continue abusing the Colombian people, the ordinary unknown Colombians." Uribe said the kidnappers must free the hostages without making "a show" of it.

He also said Colombian troops would continue counterinsurgency operations in Arauca. The ELN, as the rebel group is known by its initials in Spanish, had demanded the military stop operations in Arauca, but then seemed to drop the demand in later communiques.

Uribe has made Arauca the showcase of his attempts to put Colombia in order. The ELN and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia are battling the army and a right-wing paramilitary force for control of Arauca's oil-rich plains. U.S. Army special forces troops arrived in Arauca this month to train Colombian soldiers, angering the rebels.

The ELN said this week they would hand over Dalton and Morris to a humanitarian commission if it came to retrieve them on Friday. The commission went to Bogota's airport before dawn to fly into Arauca, but decided at the last minute it was too dangerous, one of its members said.

"We're not going today," said commission member Dario Echeverri, a Roman Catholic priest. "There were difficulties concerning minimum guarantees of security for the commission and the journalists."

A Colombian army officer in Arauca said it was next to impossible to completely reassure the commission.

"Guaranteeing security is very difficult because of the diverse terrain and the presence of guerrillas everywhere," Col. Santiago Herrera said at an army base in Saravena, Arauca. Colombia had 3,000 kidnappings last year.