Colombia: DNA shows foster child is son of hostage

BOGOTA, Colombia (CNN) -- Preliminary DNA tests indicate a 3-year-old foster child is the son of a woman being held captive by leftist rebels, Colombian officials announced Friday.

"There is a very high probability that Juan David belongs to the family of Clara Gonzalez de Rojas," Mario Iguaran Arana, the country's chief federal prosecutor, said at a news conference.

The boy, known as "Emmanuel," has been at the center of a hostage drama that raised hopes the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia would liberate some of their hostages. The rebel group, known as FARC for its Spanish acronym, had agreed to release three hostages as part of a deal brokered by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

FARC said it would release Emmanuel along with his mother, Clara Rojas, and another woman, Consuelo Gonzalez, but the mission to free the captives fell apart December 31, when the rebel group said it could not release the hostages because of Colombian military operations in the area, according to a FARC statement Chavez read on Venezuelan television.

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe denied the group's assertion, saying there were no combat operations in the area near the rebels, and he said the rebels could not release the three hostages because they did not have Emmanuel in custody.

He raised the possibility that Emmanuel, who was born in captivity to Rojas, was living in a foster home in the Colombian capital of Bogota.

Authorities in Colombia suspect the FARC duped child-welfare authorities by presenting the boy as a child in need of foster care in 2005, he said.

On Friday, Iguaran Arana said initial DNA results will be checked against tests being done in European labs to verify the child's identity.

There was no immediate response from Venezuela after the announcement concerning Emmanuel's DNA.

However, a statement on the Venezuelan government's Web site from earlier Friday said the Colombian government had not allowed Venezuela to participate in the DNA testing.

Established in 1964 as the military wing of the Colombian Communist Party, FARC is Colombia's oldest, largest, most capable and best-equipped Marxist rebel group, according to the U.S. Department of State. The United States, the European Union and Colombia classify it as a terrorist group.

FARC has justified hostage-taking as a legitimate military tactic in a long-running and complex civil war that also has involved right-wing paramilitary units, government forces and drug traffickers. Fighting has waned, but not stopped, in recent years.

Among the group's hostages are three American contractors who were captured when their plane went down in 2003 during a drug-eradication flight, and Ingrid Betancourt, a French-Colombian independent presidential candidate who was kidnapped in 2002. Rojas was kidnapped in 2002 while she managed Betancourt's campaign.

Betancourt is perhaps the best-known captive in Colombia, a country plagued by kidnapping. E-mail to a friend

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