In a statement harshly critical of the U.S. role in Colombia, the rebels said the Americans -- plus dozens of kidnapped lawmakers and police officers -- would be swapped for all imprisoned members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the FARC. The exchange would have to take place in a demilitarized safe haven, the rebels said.
Hostages now for 12 days, the Americans -- Department of Defense contractors on an apparent intelligence mission -- were seized after their plane went down in jungle about 200 miles southwest of Bogotá. U.S. officials say engine trouble caused the crash.
Two others in the plane were shot to death near the crash site. On Monday, the government charged one captured rebel in the deaths of crew members Thomas John Janis, an American, and Colombian intelligence sergeant Luis Alcides Cruz -- both of whom were shot at close range. According to a visiting U.S. Congressional delegation, Janis is a former member of the U.S. military.
Hundreds of Colombian soldiers, with the aid of the United States, have scoured the southern mountain jungle in Caquetá province to no avail.
NO TALKS
A U.S. State Department official appeared to rule out negotiations with the rebels.
'The FARC is responsible for the American crew members' safety, health and well-being. We have not authorized or requested any group to negotiate. We demand that the FARC immediately release the U.S. crew members,'' said spokeswoman Jo-Anne Prokopowicz.
The FARC has been pressuring the Colombian government for a prisoner exchange, and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, who originally said no such deal was possible, has appointed a commission to explore the possibility.
On Saturday, the first time the FARC acknowledged that it was holding the Americans, the Marxist-led group said it could guarantee the men's safety only if the Colombian army stopped patrolling an area near the crash site. Uribe refused.
On Monday, the FARC said its tough stance was justified by the direct involvement of the United States in the nearly four-decade conflict. The hostages, the rebels have claimed, were CIA agents gathering information to target them.
As a measure of American hostility, the FARC singled out Plan Colombia, the $2 billion aid plan from Washington that provides funds not only to impede the cocaine trade but to train Colombian soldiers to fight the guerrillas.
''The aforementioned proves irrefutably the direct participation of high-ranking gringo officers in overt and covert military operations . . . which de facto makes them -- once captured . . . prisoners of war,'' the FARC declared in a written statement.
The rebels, who make money off the drug trade, were further angered by reports that said the United States had dispatched another 150 soldiers to find the missing Americans. But Col. David McWilliams, spokesman for the Miami-based Southern Command, said only some 40 U.S. soldiers had been sent to Colombia to help in the rescue.
Regardless, the FARC saw more troops as a further sign of the ``barefaced invasion of our country by the United States, which violates once more our sovereignty with the complicity of the toadying government of [President] Uribe Velez.''
CANDIDATE
A proposed prisoner exchange could also include the release of Eugenio Vargas Perdomo, known as ''Carlos Bolas,'' a member of the FARC extradited from Suriname to the United States last year. Vargas is accused of being an arms and drug broker for the rebel group. Vargas is the only known FARC member in U.S. custody.
The newest FARC member to be charged in a crime, though, is Fidel Casallas Bastos Dias, accused of killing two aboard the crashed plane. [End]
Herald staff writers Andres Oppenheimer and Renato Perez contributed to this report.
IN 6 weeks time, FARC might want to prepare them selves for a little Saddamizing........