Colombian President Alvaro Uribe on Thursday requested international help to search for and identify the dead bodies of 11 former legislators kidnapped by leftist rebels and killed ten days ago, according to dpa. "We request the support of the international community to search for the bodies and, when we find them, we will request an international forensic commission that explains to the world the circumstances of this atrocious crime," Uribe said in a press conference. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) said in a statement Thursday that the 11 deaths were caused by crossfire during an attack on their camp by an unidentified group last week. However, Caracol Radio, quoting military sources, said the rebels probably murdered the hostages after an attack on their camp by dissident paramilitaries. Uribe stressed that his administration will not accept "blackmail" or demilitarize the two towns in south-western Colombia as FARC has demanded as a precondition for negotiating a humanitarian exchange of hostages for rebels held in prison. "The government will not free members of the guerrillas for them to return to FARC to murder and to kidnap," the president warned. Uribe further noted that the hostages were not killed in a rescue operation by the Colombian military, since the "government had no knowledge of the place where they were held captive." "The death of the kidnapped with no guerrilla casualties or injured soldiers shows that there was no crossfire and shows that FARC want to hide the crime they committed," he said. Leftist rebels said in their statement that 11 of the 12 former regional Valle del Cauca legislators which they took hostage in April 2002 died in crossfire on June 18.
