Colombia on Wednesday invited the world's bounty hunters to scour its jungles and mountains and drag back rebel chiefs in return for cash rewards. "It would be great if all the bounty hunters in the world came to capture those bandits. The money's there for them, and the rewards are good," Vice President Francisco Santos told reporters.
The Colombian government has put rewards of up to about $2 million on the heads of outlaws like Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda, veteran Marxist commander of the 17,000 fighters of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
Santos' comments came after officials said they had paid an unspecified reward to an anonymous informant who helped them catch Rodrigo Granda, a top rebel who authorities called the FARC's "foreign minister." Granda's capture has caused a diplomatic squabble with neighboring Venezuela, which says he was kidnapped from a street in Caracas. The Colombian government, which has long suspected Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chavez of sympathies for the FARC, insists they nabbed Granda within their borders.
President Alvaro Uribe owes his 70-percent approval rating to a military campaign against the FARC but the group's top commanders keep safe in hideouts in the country's extensive mountains and jungles. |