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Chavez Loses Negotiator Role

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By FRANK BAJAK, The Associated Press

Published: November 23, 2007

BOGOTA, Colombia - Colombia's cancellation of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's mediation with leftist rebels threw into disarray hopes for a prisoner swap that would free three U.S. military contractors and a former presidential candidate.

Chavez said Thursday that he accepted the decision, but nevertheless was insistent that a process was under way that couldn't be stopped so abruptly.

President Alvaro Uribe shut down Chavez's high-profile mediation after the Venezuelan leader defied him by directly contacting this country's army chief Wednesday to discuss the hostages.

Uribe also terminated the mediation role of a leftist Colombian senator and Chavez ally, Piedad Cordoba. She had called the army chief, Gen. Mario Montoya, and passed the phone to Chavez.

"We will press on in any case. Because the process has begun there are things you can't halt just like that," Chavez told a rally in Venezuela on Thursday night. "I'm waiting for the FARC rebels to bring me proof of life of the prisoners."

France's president, Nicolas Sarkozy, also appealed to Uribe on Thursday to reconsider his decision, announced late Wednesday, to end the go-between role Chavez assumed in August.

Among the 45 hostages with lives in the balance is Ingrid Betancourt, a French-Colombian national - and anti-corruption crusader - seized in 2002 while campaigning for Colombia's presidency. She has become a cause celebre in France.

The American hostages, Keith Stansell, Marc Gonsalves and Tom Howes, were taken by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, in February 2003 after their small plane crashed in the jungle during a surveillance mission.

Betancourt and the three Americans are valuable assets for the FARC, which has been fighting the government for more than four decades and is bankrolled chiefly by the cocaine trade.

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