Colombian Group Frees Its Last 6 Captives

A high-profile kidnap drama, staged by Colombia’s right-wing paramilitary warlord to press for a role in peace talks between the government and Marxist rebels, ended peacefully Tuesday with the release of six captive lawmakers, authorities said.

Two other legislators, including a former president of the Senate, were freed Monday. The six turned over Tuesday, to delegates from the church and International Committee of the Red Cross, were the last remaining hostages.

All had been held since late October, and Red Cross officials said all were apparently released unharmed.

Their return to freedom came after the government bowed to a key demand from paramilitary chief Carlos Castano, who had insisted that a top government official hold face-to-face talks with him to hear his views about efforts to end a decade-long conflict.

The meeting took place Monday in one of Castano’s strongholds in northern Bolivar province, where Interior Minister Humberto de la Calle said he held nearly three hours of talks with the commander.

Castano has repeatedly demanded a role in now 2-year-old negotiations between the government and Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia rebels so he can confront his rivals on the political stage. But the government of President Andres Pastrana has balked at having any direct contact with Castano, and Monday’s meeting with him was its first since Pastrana took office in 1998.

Local and international human rights groups say Castano’s United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia commits most of the peasant massacres and other atrocities in this Andean nation’s war.

De la Calle stressed that Monday’s meeting did not mean the government had opened parallel negotiations with Castano, whose outlaw militia of roughly 7,000 fighters targets leftists and suspected rebel sympathizers.

But Castano has succeeded in grabbing the national spotlight with the kidnappings and used them to insist that, sooner or later, his United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia will have to be given a seat at the negotiating table.