Colombian Marxist rebels are set to free two women hostages to Venezuela after a previous mission to pick them up collapsed on New Years Eve, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez said last night.
Mr Chavez said he could send helicopters within hours to collect the hostages held for years in jungle camps after Farc guerrilla leaders told him where to find them.
"I hope that early tomorrow Venezuelan helicopters, with the Red Cross aboard, will leave our country," Mr Chavez said. "Hopefully in a matter of hours, they will be free."
Despite strained relations with Mr Chavez over his mediation to free hostages, Colombia's government agreed to support the new mission, and the International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed it would take part.
An earlier attempt to free the captives crumbled on December 31st after the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or Farc, failed to reveal where their captives were held.
Rebel leaders had agreed to free Colombian politicians Consuelo Gonzalez and Clara Rojas, along with Ms Rojas' young son Emmanuel, who was born in jungle camp.
Mr Chavez sent an air convoy accompanied by foreign dignitaries deep into Colombia to pick up the three, but the rebels said army operations made it too dangerous to move the hostages and the deal fell through. It later emerged the child was actually living with a foster family in Bogota.
The fiasco prompted Mr Chavez to bicker with Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe, who he accused of blocking the hostage release plan. Relations between the two presidents were already strained, after Mr Uribe tried to exclude Mr Chavez from hostage talks earlier in the year.
Farc, which began as a peasant army in the 1960s, is now largely funded by Colombia's cocaine trade and uses kidnapping as a weapon in its war against the state.
It holds hundreds of hostages, including three US anti-drug contractors and French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt.