BOGOTA, Colombia -- (AP) -- Colombia said Friday it has appealed to Cuban President Fidel Castro to help obtain the release of 60 soldiers abducted by Colombian rebels in an August attack.
Foreign Minister Maria Emma Mejia, speaking to Colombia's Caracol radio network from Havana, said she had made the request during a meeting in Havana on Thursday. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Colombia's Nobel Prize-winning author and a longtime friend of Castro, also attended the meeting.
Mejia was in Havana to participate in a meeting of the Association of Caribbean States.
``It would be very important if Commander Castro had the opportunity to intervene in this matter,'' Colombian Interior Minister Horacio Serpa said Friday in Bogota.
For many years, Castro was a source of aid and inspiration for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the decades-old leftist insurgency that is holding the soldiers. They were abducted Aug. 30 after rebels overran a military base in the army's worst defeat in decades.
The Colombian government has pulled most of its troops out of a 5,600-square mile jungle region where the soldiers are believed held, fulfilling one of the conditions for their release set by the rebels.
But the military refuses to leave several towns within the zone, and talks are at a stalemate. Rebels appear to be using their captives to gain political ground and win international recognition.
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