reuters.com Wed January 29, 2003 12:26 AM ET By Ibon Villelabeitia

BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - Marxist rebels said on Tuesday they would release within the next two days a British reporter and a U.S. photographer they kidnapped last week in a war-torn stretch of eastern Colombia.

"They will be released in the next few days, in one or two days," Antonio Garcia, a senior commander of the Cuban-inspired National Liberation Army, or ELN, told RCN radio.

British reporter Ruth Morris and U.S. photographer Scott Dalton were abducted while traveling on a freelance assignment for the Los Angeles Times along a rural road on Jan. 21 in the violent province of Arauca, where U.S. Special Forces are training local troops in counterinsurgency techniques.

Morris and Dalton, both experienced hands in Colombia, were stopped at an ELN roadblock, hooded and taken to a secret guerrilla camp, said their driver, who was later released.

Garcia gave no details of the planned release but said the ELN was coordinating with the Los Angeles Times.

Colombia is ravaged by a four-decades-old war that pits leftist rebels against right-wing militias and the U.S.-backed military. It is one of the world's most dangerous places for reporters. Eight Colombian journalists were killed last year.

"WE HOPE TO SEE OUR FAMILIES SOON" In a crackling message broadcast over an ELN clandestine radio station, Morris said the two journalists were fine and in good health, but "very worried" about their relatives.

"I want my family to know that we are fine and in good health, and we hope to see them soon," Morris said in an interview with a man who identified himself as a member of the ELN's Domingo Lain unit, which operates in Arauca.

Dalton's voice was not heard in the message, recorded on Monday and released Tuesday.

The man interviewing Morris said the pair's release would take place "as soon as security conditions permit it."

Garcia, who spoke from an undisclosed location, said Morris was given an opportunity to broadcast a birthday greeting to her father over the ELN radio station.

The Los Angeles Times declined to comment.

Another radio message broadcast last week by the Domingo Lain unit said the release of Morris and Dalton depended on undefined "political and military conditions."

Military intelligence sources have pointed to infighting between the Domingo Lain unit and the ELN's central command. But Garcia, considered the ELN's top military commander and its No. 2 man, said the decision was definitive.

"There is a critical combat situation in the area but the will and the decision of the ELN is to release them in the coming days," he said, adding he hoped the pair's "contact" with the ELN contributes to the understanding of the conflict from the rebel's point of view.

FARC FREE TV CREW News of the radio broadcast came as rebels of the larger Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as "FARC," on Tuesday released unharmed a five-man Colombian television crew they had kidnapped on Sunday, also in Arauca province.

The RCN Television crew had traveled to Arauca to cover the kidnapping of Morris and Dalton and the region's deteriorating security when they were snatched by the FARC. RCN said rebels took the crew's equipment, including a satellite telephone.

Arauca, an oil-rich region of savannas and swamps bordering Venezuela, is one of the most violent zones in a war that kills thousands every year. Suspected rebels Sunday killed six soldiers after detonating the fourth car bomb in a month in a fresh challenge to hard-line President Alvaro Uribe. Uribe has declared areas in Arauca as "special war zones."

Despite the savagery of Colombia's war, foreign correspondents here have long enjoyed a type of diplomatic immunity, moving relatively free through the countryside and interviewing rebels and militias sometimes fresh from the killing field.

The Cuban-inspired ELN, a 1960s rebel group, kidnaps hundreds of people every year for ransom to pay for their struggle, which they say is to impose socialist reform in a country torn by the divide between rich and poor.

asia.reuters.com Tue January 28, 2003 08:26 PM ET By Ibon Villelabeitia

BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - Marxist rebels said on Tuesday they would release within the next two days a British reporter and a U.S. photographer they kidnapped last week in a war-torn stretch of eastern Colombia.

"They will be released in the next few days, in one or two days," Antonio Garcia, a senior commander of the Cuban-inspired National Liberation Army, or ELN, told RCN radio.

British reporter Ruth Morris and U.S. photographer Scott Dalton were abducted while traveling on a freelance assignment for the Los Angeles Times along a rural road on Jan. 21 in the violent province of Arauca, where U.S. Special Forces are training local troops in counterinsurgency techniques.

Morris and Dalton, both experienced hands in Colombia, were stopped at an ELN roadblock, hooded and taken to a secret guerrilla camp, said their driver, who was later released.

Garcia gave no details of the planned release but said the ELN was coordinating with the Los Angeles Times.

Colombia is ravaged by a four-decades-old war that pits leftist rebels against right-wing militias and the U.S.-backed military. It is one of the world's most dangerous places for reporters. Eight Colombian journalists were killed last year.

"WE HOPE TO SEE OUR FAMILIES SOON"

In a crackling message broadcast over an ELN clandestine radio station, Morris said the two journalists were fine and in good health, but "very worried" about their relatives.

"I want my family to know that we are fine and in good health, and we hope to see them soon," Morris said in an interview with a man who identified himself as a member of the ELN's Domingo Lain unit, which operates in Arauca.

Dalton's voice was not heard in the message, recorded on Monday and released Tuesday.

The man interviewing Morris said the pair's release would take place "as soon as security conditions permit it."

Garcia, who spoke from an undisclosed location, said Morris was given an opportunity to broadcast a birthday greeting to her father over the ELN radio station.

The Los Angeles Times declined to comment.

Another radio message broadcast last week by the Domingo Lain unit said the release of Morris and Dalton depended on undefined "political and military conditions."

Military intelligence sources have pointed to infighting between the Domingo Lain unit and the ELN's central command. But Garcia, considered the ELN's top military commander and its No. 2 man, said the decision was definitive.

"There is a critical combat situation in the area but the will and the decision of the ELN is to release them in the coming days," he said, adding he hoped the pair's "contact" with the ELN contributes to the understanding of the conflict from the rebel's point of view.

FARC FREE TV CREW

News of the radio broadcast came as rebels of the larger Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as "FARC," on Tuesday released unharmed a five-man Colombian television crew they had kidnapped on Sunday, also in Arauca province.

The RCN Television crew had traveled to Arauca to cover the kidnapping of Morris and Dalton and the region's deteriorating security when they were snatched by the FARC. RCN said rebels took the crew's equipment, including a satellite telephone.

Arauca, an oil-rich region of savannas and swamps bordering Venezuela, is one of the most violent zones in a war that kills thousands every year. Suspected rebels Sunday killed six soldiers after detonating the fourth car bomb in a month in a fresh challenge to hard-line President Alvaro Uribe. Uribe has declared areas in Arauca as "special war zones."

Despite the savagery of Colombia's war, foreign correspondents here have long enjoyed a type of diplomatic immunity, moving relatively free through the countryside and interviewing rebels and militias sometimes fresh from the killing field.

The Cuban-inspired ELN, a 1960s rebel group, kidnaps hundreds of people every year for ransom to pay for their struggle, which they say is to impose socialist reform in a country torn by the divide between rich and poor.

www.alertnet.org

(Writes through with rebel announcement) By Ibon Villelabeitia

BOGOTA, Colombia, Jan 28 (Reuters) - Marxist rebels said on Tuesday they would release in the next two days a British reporter and a U.S. photographer they kidnapped last week in a war-torn stretch of eastern Colombia.

"They will be released in the next few days, in one or two days," Antonio Garcia, a commander of the Cuban-inspired National Liberation Army, or ELN, told RCN radio, adding the two were in "good health."

British reporter Ruth Morris and U.S. photographer Scott Dalton were traveling on a freelance assignment for the Los Angeles Times along a rural road in the violent province of Arauca when they were stopped at a rebel roadblock and spirited away on Jan. 21.

Garcia did not give details of the planned release but said the ELN was coordinating with the Los Angeles Times. "There is a critical combat situation in the area but the will and the decision of the ELN is to release them in the coming days."

Colombia is torn by a four-decade-old war that pits leftist rebels against right-wing paramilitaries and the U.S.-backed military. It is one of the world's most dangerous places for reporters, and eight Colombian journalists were killed last year.

Speaking from an undisclosed location, Garcia said Morris was given an opportunity to broadcast a birthday greeting to her father on Monday over an ELN clandestine radio station.

Reuters obtained a partial transcript of the broadcast Tuesday, in which Morris is briefly interviewed by a man who identifies himself as a member of the ELN's Domingo Lain unit.

The man said the release will take place "as soon as security conditions permit it."

"First of all, let's go on with an interview with the journalists, a U.S. photographer, and a British journalist for the Los Angeles Times," the man says in a crackling broadcast.

"Good afternoon. This is Ruth Morris."

"Do you copy?," the man's voice asks.

"Yes I copy," Morris answers.

The communication with Morris then becomes inaudible. Dalton is not heard in the conversation.

FARC FREE TV CREW

Garcia's interview came just as rebels of the larger Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as "FARC," released unharmed a five-man Colombian television crew they had kidnapped on Sunday, also in Arauca province.

The RCN Television crew had traveled to Arauca to cover the kidnapping of Morris and Dalton and the region's deteriorating security when they were snatched by the FARC. RCN said rebels took the crew's equipment, including a satellite telephone.

Arauca, an oil-rich region of savannas and swamps bordering Venezuela, is one of the most violent zones in a war that kills thousands every year. Suspected rebels Sunday killed six soldiers after detonating the fourth car bomb in a month.

Morris and Dalton, both experienced hands in Colombia, were stopped at an ELN roadblock, hooded and taken to a secret guerrilla camp, said their driver, who was later released.

A group of 70 U.S. Special Forces personnel are in Arauca to train local troops counterinsurgency techniques to protect an oil pipeline from frequent rebel attacks. The pipeline serves U.S.-based oil company Occidental Petroleum.

In a clandestine radio broadcast last week, the 5,000-strong ELN said it was demanding unspecified "political and military conditions" for the release of Morris and Dalton.

In an interview with Reuters in April, the ELN's commander in Arauca said the United States would become the "biggest enemy in our political and military struggle" if Washington sent the troops to Arauca. The commander, identified as Pablo, never mentioned kidnapping journalists, however.

The Cuban-inspired ELN kidnaps hundreds of people every year for ransom money to pay for their struggle, which they say is to impose socialist reform in a country torn by the divide between rich and poor. The war kills thousands every year.

www.timesdaily.com By ANDREW SELSKY Associated Press Writer January 27. 2003 6:07PM

A Colombian police officer stands guard over a bridge on the Arauca River that leads from Colombia to Venezuela, Saturday, Jan. 18, 2003. President Alvaro Uribe has made Arauca state a priority, but months into his crackdown, it remains a lawless frontier. The governor, a retired army colonel, recently resigned because of death threats. And while government forces are concentrated in the towns and U.S. special forces have arrived to train Colombian troops, rebels and paramilitaries still carry out attacks in the grassy savannas at will. (AP Photo/Zoe Selsky)

Colombia's interior minister insisted Monday that the government was still in control of Arauca state, a region where one rebel group killed six soldiers and a civilian with a car bomb over the weekend and another kidnapped two foreign journalists.

Colombian Defense Minister Martha Lucia Ramirez and the commander of the armed forces, Gen. Jorge Enrique Mora, visited Arauca on Monday to investigate the volatile situation.

The car bomb, which exploded near a military patrol in the village of Pueblo Nuevo on Sunday, was believed set off by the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the army said.

The civilian who died was the driver, the army said. The blast, about 200 miles northeast of the capital, also wounded eight soldiers and another civilian, the army said.

Authorities have accused rebels of twice using hostages as unwitting suicide bombers, luring them into cars without telling them the vehicles were packed with explosives, and then detonating the bombs by remote control when the car neared a military target.

Arauca - a state about twice the size of New Jersey in northeastern Colombia, along the Venezuelan border - is rich in oil resources, and FARC and other rebel groups have repeatedly attacked a pipeline running through the state. An illegal right-wing militia is battling the rebels for control of the oil plains in the state, which has about 350,000 residents.

Some 70 U.S. Army special forces trainers are to begin training a Colombian army brigade in counterinsurgency tactics in Arauca this week so they can protect the oil pipeline, owned jointly by Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum and the Colombian oil monopoly Ecopetrol.

Interior Minister Fernando Londono said Monday the government was still in control of Arauca, despite the violence.

"This doesn't mean that the government, the armed forces and the police have lost control of Arauca, which is a very difficult zone to manage," Londono told RCN radio Monday.

The army announced it killed three rebels Sunday near the Arauca town of Saravena. No further details were immediately available. There was also no word on the fate of kidnapped American photographer Scott Dalton, 34, and British reporter Ruth Morris, 35.

Their rebel captors - the National Liberation Army - have said nothing about the freelance journalists since announcing Thursday over a clandestine rebel radio station that they had "detained" the two, who were on assignment for the Los Angeles Times, on Jan. 21.

There was concern the recent bombings and clashes between government security forces and rebels put the hostages' lives at risk, but there have been no calls for the army to mount a rescue attempt.

Arauca's oil pipeline resumed pumping Sunday night after being shut down for four days due to a rebel bombing, an Ecopetrol spokesman told Dow Jones Newswires on Monday.

The dynamite attack last Wednesday was the first of the year on the pipeline, which was bombed 40 times in 2002 and 170 times in 2001.

Some 3,500 people die each year across Colombia in the decades-long war. The army announced Monday that rebels had killed eight people over the weekend in various parts of the country, including two who had been kidnapped.

www.tuscaloosanews.com By ZOE SELSKY Associated Press Writer January 26, 2003

A Colombian police officer stands guard over a bridge on the Arauca River that leads from Colombia to Venezuela, Saturday, Jan. 18, 2003. President Alvaro Uribe has made Arauca state a priority, but months into his crackdown, it remains a lawless frontier. The governor, a retired army colonel, recently resigned because of death threats. And while government forces are concentrated in the towns and U.S. special forces have arrived to train Colombian troops, rebels and paramilitaries still carry out attacks in the grassy savannas at will. (AP Photo/Zoe Selsky) It is hard to find any place as lawless in Colombia as the towns and sweeping savannas of oil-rich Arauca state, where two foreign journalists were kidnapped last week.

Slightly bigger than Switzerland, Arauca was settled by only a handful of hardy pioneers. But when oil was discovered here in the early 1980s, rebels from the National Liberation Army quickly moved in and began extorting money from the company that built the pipeline.

Then came the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Colombia's main rebel group, and the two groups began bombing the pipeline with astonishing regularity - 170 times in 2001 alone. Right-wing paramilitary gunmen entered the fray a few years ago and are trying to push the rebels from Arauca. Civilians living on Arauca's sun-scorched plains endure kidnappings, massacres and cattle rustling.

So when President Alvaro Uribe took office last August, he made taming Arauca state a priority - declaring special security zones, beefing up the army's presence and appointing a hard-liner as governor. U.S. special forces are to begin training Colombian army troops this week to protect the pipeline from rebel attacks.

But months into the crackdown, Arauca is as wild and violent as ever.

On Tuesday, National Liberation Army rebels intercepted photographer Scott Dalton, a native of Conroe, Texas, and reporter Ruth Morris, a Briton, with a roadblock on an Arauca highway, 70 miles southwest of the state capital.

The rebels led the journalists away with hoods covering their heads and announced Thursday they had kidnapped the two freelancers, on assignment for the Los Angeles Times, and would release them only when "the political and military conditions permit."

Gov. Jose Emiro Palencia, a retired army colonel, recently resigned because of death threats. Bombs still explode in the towns and on rural roads. Rebels and paramilitaries still brazenly carry out attacks in Arauca's countryside.

"The accumulation of all these things really worried me," Palencia said in an interview with The Associated Press. Overwhelmed by the violence, he felt he was "not being able to respond to the people's needs."

Hours after Palencia resigned on Jan. 14, a state government consultant in charge of community relations was murdered in Arauca's state capital, also called Arauca. No one has claimed responsibility for the killing. Authorities arrested a suspected rebel in connection with the case.

In Arauca town, violence most often comes in the form of rebel bombs. They are placed in cars, stuck in garbage cans - even attached to donkeys. Bombs go off in the dead of the night, or in the middle of the hot afternoon. In October, one bomb exploded in front of a school hours before Uribe arrived for a visit, killing two police officers.

"These criminals have turned Arauca into a laboratory to show off their ability to sow terror," said Col. Luis Alcides Morales, the state police commander. "Here, there is nothing romantic about the guerrillas."

The army and police have focused their resources on Arauca's main towns and on the oil pipeline - critics say to the detriment of security in the countryside.

At times, the state capital appears more like a military camp than a town of 40,000 residents.

Heavily armed police officers stand on street corners, looking suspiciously at any new faces. Soldiers patrol the streets on foot, often crossing paths with children on bicycles.

At the police station - built like a military fortification where officers live in barracks - prosecutors sent from Bogota work around the clock to expedite search and arrest warrants for suspected rebels.

About 30 people a day are brought in to the station for questioning and more than 100 have been arrested since September, Morales said.

Still, few residents of Arauca town feel secure.

Jair Ceballos, who owns a beauty shop and works part-time at a pharmacy, used to love going to the park with his young daughters. Now, he keeps his family indoors.

"I don't even feel comfortable sitting down at a cafe to have a soft drink," Ceballos said. "Because at any moment, a car bomb will explode, or someone will shoot the guy sitting next to you. After work, everyone in Arauca just locks themselves up at home."