Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez will probably receive a group of hostages from Colombia's biggest guerrilla group before the year ends, Venezuela's Deputy Foreign Minister Rodolfo Sanz said.

Chavez will give the go ahead by Dec. 31 for a caravan of aircraft to fly to Colombia to pick up the prisoners, Sanz said today in Caracas in comments broadcast by Venezuelan state television.

``It has to be, at the latest, in the next 48 or 72 hours, so that they can celebrate the new year with their families,'' he said.

Colombia gave its approval yesterday for Chavez to carry out the plan to retrieve three prisoners held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. The Venezuelan president was able to negotiate their release even after Colombian President Alvaro Uribe pulled his support for Chavez's role as a mediator with the Marxist guerrillas.

Red Cross to support delivery of Colombian hostages

Representatives of the International Red Cross confirmed they are accompanying an international delegation that is picking up the three hostages the rebel Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) are to release in Colombia, in order to ensure the neutrality of the operation.

Martial Izard, the spokesman for the Red Cross International Committee in Geneva, told Efe that "the governments of Colombia and Venezuela asked if we could join the operation, and we agreed to participate as a surety of neutrality."

Authorities in Bogota and Caracas asked for the three airplanes where the international team is traveling to rescue the hostages to be identified with the Red Cross logo.

"At least one delegate of the Red Cross will be in each plane or chopper and accompany the delegation as a neutral middleman," Izard added.

One cargo airplane and two helicopters -bearing the Red Cross logo- are to take off from an airport in Venezuela to the Colombian town of Villavicencio, some 100 kilometers southeast Bogota.

From Villavicencio, the international delegation and the Red Cross representatives are to take a helicopter to the place designated by the FARC to pick up the hostages. They are then returning to Venezuela.