Commission fulfuls Colombian rebels' demand

A humanitarian commission today took a firsthand look at impoverished villages in northern Colombia, meeting a key demand of a rebel group holding seven foreign backpackers.

The visit to the Sierra Nevada mountains by a delegation of U.N. representatives, human rights workers and Catholic Church officials came a day before the left wing National Liberation Army, or ELN, said it would free two of the hostages.

But there was no word of the future of the other hostages who include British TV producer Mark Henderson.

The ELN, whose gunmen seized the three European and four Israeli tourists from jungle ruins on September 12, has made the commission’s trip a condition for any release.

The group has repeatedly denounced alleged hardship inflicted by outlawed right-wing paramilitary factions and the army on the mainly Indian inhabitants of the Sierra Nevada.

“There are grave problems of health, education, infrastructure and alimentation, that affect people daily,” Jorge Valles, one of the U.N. official touring the villages, told local television. He said he would pass on a list of recommendations to the government in a report next week.

The ELN announced on Thursday it would free Reinhilt Weigel of Germany and Spaniard Asier Huegen Echeverria on Monday, provided the commission made the trip.

Separately, the commander of a paramilitary group that has agreed to demobilise – the first of the illegal militia groups to do so – said today he planned to convert his faction into a political party.

“We always knew that at one moment we would open talks with the government so we could continue to pursue our ideas in a legal way,” said Giovanni Marin, alias ”Commander R,” in an interview with weekly Semana.

The 800 fighters of Marin’s Cacique Nutibara bloc are due to lay down their arms on Tuesday at a ceremony in Colombia’s second city of Medellin. They will then spend three weeks at a rehabilitation centre.

Negotiations are currently under way with the government for the planned demobilisation of 12,000 of the estimated 13,000 paramilitary fighters in Colombia by 2006.

The paramilitary factions emerged in the 1980s to combat two leftist rebel groups.