Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces

Even at a rally where the placards, chants and speeches carried a distinctly anti-government flavor, Colombians on Thursday backed President Alvaro Uribe after his soldiers' risky incursion into Ecuador to kill a leftist rebel leader. The incursion Saturday brought reproval from the Organization of American States and prompted neighbors Ecuador and Venezuela to mass troops at their borders and cut diplomatic ties.

Colombia's Defense Ministry said Wednesday night that it had recovered uranium that officials have alleged leftist rebels might have acquired to make a "dirty bomb." In a statement, the ministry said informants last week brought military intelligence officers a chemical sample, which tests found to be "degraded uranium." On Wednesday night, officials were at the site a few miles south of Bogota to recover the source of the sample, a cache weighing up to 66 pounds.

U.S. officials expressed concern Thursday over charges that the Colombian rebel group the FARC was seeking ingredients for a radioactive "dirty bomb," but said the material discovered this week poses little danger. Even as they downplayed the threat from about 66 pounds of degraded or depleted uranium Colombian officials said they found and had linked to FARC guerrillas, the U.S. officials said they were not dismissing Bogota's claim that the rebel group intended to procure deadly weapons.

Chased by the U.S.-backed armed forces, this country's largest rebel group is now under pressure to surrender from a surprising new source -- President Hugo Chavez of neighboring Venezuela. During his nine years in office, the populist Chavez has regularly expressed support for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

Arriving to a hero's welcome in France, Ingrid Betancourt said Friday that she cried a lot "from pain and indignation" during her six years as a prisoner in the Colombian jungle, but now her tears are ones of joy. French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife met the French-Colombian politician on the tarmac of an air base outside Paris, showering her with hugs, kisses and smiles. Sarkozy made freeing Betancourt a priority when he was elected in May 2007.

Pardon Patricia Nieto if she wasn't swept up in the euphoria that lifted this nation after the recent rescue of 15 hostages held by leftist guerrillas. The rebel group the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which was tricked into giving up long-held hostages, including presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and three U.S. defense contractors, is still holding 700 people, including Nieto's husband, Sigifredo Lopez.

Not a single one of his 2,224 days in captivity went by without Fernando Araujo thinking of escaping his captors. When his opportunity finally came amid the gunfire and chaos of a New Year's Eve military attack against the leftist rebels who were holding him, he took it.

Mayor Cielo Gonzalez's house looks like a Marine outpost in Fallouja, buttressed by stacks of sandbags to absorb any blasts. She travels with 10 gun-toting guards, and recently received a gift from President Alvaro Uribe: the most heavily armored SUV in Colombia. "I am often very afraid or very bored," said Gonzalez, a tall, athletic 38-year-old. "The guerrillas have made me a prisoner."

A Colombian police officer who fled to freedom after eight years as a hostage said leftist rebels held him with three American military contractors and former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt. Jhon Pinchao Blanco escaped the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, near the southeastern town of Mitu. He walked for 17 days in the jungle before running into a narcotics patrol, said police spokesman Sgt. Alberto Cantillo.

An alleged international arms dealer accused of arming militants from Iraq to Nicaragua for decades has been arrested on U.S. charges of conspiring to supply Colombian rebels with millions of dollars' worth of weapons, federal authorities said Friday. Monzer Kassar of Marbella, Spain, and codefendants Tareq Mousa Ghazi and Luis Felipe Moreno Godoy were arrested Thursday as they prepared to complete a transaction to pay for the weapons, federal officials said.