Chavez agrees to talks with guerillas over hostages

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Colombia’s Alvaro Uribe agreed to allow a representative of Colombia’s largest guerrilla group to travel to Caracas for talks aimed at freeing dozens of rebel-held hostages, including politician Ingrid Betancourt and three US defence contractors.

“I am prepared to speak with whomever they send,” Chavez said late on Friday after an eight-hour meeting just outside of Bogota with Uribe to discuss advancing a possible swap of the hostages for imprisoned guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. The rebels, he said, had already accepted the invitation.