A group of international notables have today asked both the Colombian president, Álvaro Uribe and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to speed up the liberation of soldiers currently kidnapped and to continue to seek a way forward to bring the humanitarian exchange to a conclusion.

This appeal was launched via a letter written by a group of intellectuals, politicians, artists and human rights activists. Among their ranks features the Nobel Peace Price laureate Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, who is, in addition, a member of the Ethics Commission for Peace in Colombia. Signatories also include the director of the Agency for Co-operation and Development of the Principality of Asturias, Rafaël Palacios and the Spanish author Alba Rico.

‘We invite the Colombian government and the guerrillas of FARC-EP to consolidate this approach, to continue the process of coming together to facilitate the humanitarian exchange of soldiers and police captured by FARC for those political prisoners held in Colombian jails’, states the letter.

FARC recently promised the liberation of Corporal Pablo Emilio Moncayo and the soldier José Daniel Calvo, but Uribe is demanding that the guerrilla hand over ‘all’ the hostages- 24 prisoners in uniform- because it will not accept that the process of liberation be carried out in stages. To this end he has authorised the senator Piedad Cordoba to co-ordinate the humanitarian mission, even though for several weeks now he had not agreed to her participation in these events.

On this subject the signatories of the letter call upon the Colombian president ‘to accept the meeting requested’ by Cordoba ‘to deal with the underlying questions in relation to the liberation process’, while expressing their support for the senator and the group Colombians for Peace (CCP) of which she is the chairperson in this process. Similarly they have urged support from ‘the European Union, the United States, countries who wish to see peace in Colombia and governments of Latin America as well as the United Nations’ to ‘support this process and this initiative by CCP’ and ‘to make a contribution to the development of this initiative which will lead to an agreement between the two sides’.