FARC rebels in Táchira hospital ... one of them may be the man that replaced Raúl Reyes

Caracas Daily Journal (Vincent Bevins): Two high-level members of the FARC turned up at a Venezuelan private clinic wounded near the Colombian border in Táchira, and Venezuela has chosen to collaborate with the Colombian authorities. They sent Colombia fingerprints of the presumed rebels, who were being treated for gunshot wounds, but were also being held captive until their identities were cleared up.

One of the rebels is thought to be Jesús Toncel Redondo, or "Joaquín Gómez," the man who recently took the place of Raúl Reyes as the number-two man in the FARC.
According to the National Guard, they are "obeying a request made by the Military Comptroller to keep the wounded in custody." Apparently Gómez received a bullet wound within Colombia or very near to the border, and arrived with another presumed rebel to treat the wound in a nearby clinic. They were taken to another location, and were moved again, probably to the nearest Venezuelan military hospital.

If it is indeed Gómez, this would be the third member of the FARC's Secretariat killed or wounded in the last few weeks. Reyes was killed by the now-famous Colombian operation in Ecuador, Iván Rojas was allegedly murdered by one of his men, and now someone seems to have shot Gómez.

It is not necessarily clear that he would have been shot by the Colombian military, because according to Chávez and various sources, that region is full of paramilitaries and gangsters as well as Colombian military operations. But most significant is the fact that the Venezuelan government has chosen to cooperate with Colombia in identifying and possibly even extraditing these men. It may be the first thing the governments have worked on since the diplomatic crisis, and would directly contradict Uribe's claims that Chávez supports the FARC.

Of course, in so public a case, it would be difficult to openly give shelter to such a high-ranking official, and therefore forces Chávez to make a decision. In this case, he can no longer remain "neutral," as he has attempted in the past, but must actually help Colombia put their operatives away or actually give them asylum.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolás Maduro has already contacted his counterpart, Araújo, to begin the proceedings that normally accompany these types of situations. Meanwhile, Senator Piedad Córdoba has delivered new proofs of life directly to family members of those that appear in the proofs, seeking to further efforts for an embattled humanitarian exchange process.

"It's a voice of hope because the most important thing is to continue working in the direction of the humanitarian accord, to have the parties sit down and for that agreement to come about as soon as possible," she said.