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Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez plans to speak Wednesday about the eagerly anticipated release of three hostages held by Colombian Marxist rebels as the families anxiously wait for news.
Chavez, who has tried to mediate a possible prisoner exchange between the guerrillas and the Colombia government, will speak to reporters at 1530 GMT in Caracas to discuss "the process of freeing the three hostages," Information Minister William Lara said Tuesday.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) said on December 18 they would free former lawmaker Consuelo Gonzalez de Perdomo, presidential campaign manager Clara Rojas, and Emmanuel, the son she bore to a rebel in captivity.
FARC said the captives would be handed to Chavez or a representative of his choice, but doubts over the release have grown as the three remain in rebel hands.
A Venezuelan presidency official told AFP on condition of anonymity that the three would likely be freed "before the end of the year," but the daily Vea, which is close to the ruling party, said Monday that if no release came by Christmas the next opportunity might not be until January 6.
Venezuelan authorities have remained mum about the process, refusing to release any information for fear of compromising the negotiations.
"We can now only wait to hear what (Chavez) says," Ivan Rojas, a brother of Clara Rojas, told AFP.
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe had named Chavez in August a mediator in a possible swap of 45 high-profile hostages held by the rebels -- including Rojas and Franco-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt -- for 500 FARC prisoners.
But Uribe stripped his Venezuelan counterpart of the role in November, accusing Chavez of breaking protocol by directly contacting a Colombian general.
Chavez, however, has continued to be involved in the effort to get some hostages freed.
The Venezuelan leader spent Christmas in a residence in the western state of Barinas, near the Colombian border, a region that is sometimes cited as a possible site for the release of the three hostages.
Rojas has been a captive since February 2002, when she was seized along with Franco-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt, who was campaigning for president at the time. Perdomo was kidnapped in 2001.
Betancourt, who turned 46 on Tuesday, and three American nationals are among the 45 hostages FARC wants to exchange.
Meanwhile, supporters in France and Colombia kept vigil as they awaited news of a release, with one group based in Paris urging people to light a candle on Christmas night in a show of solidarity with the captives.
Betancourt's husband Juan Carlos Lecompte dropped 22,000 photographs of her two children from a small plane he rented and flew on the weekend over a Colombian jungle near Brazil where she is thought to be held.
Each photo was signed "for Ingrid from Juan Carlos."
Colombian Peace Commissioner Luis Carlos Restrepo on Monday said there was no obstacle standing in the way of the hostage release.
"The government welcomes the release of the three hostages FARC is holding and statements that the government is launching operations to prevent the release are groundless," Restrepo told reporters.