Venezuelan Minister of Foreign Affairs Nicolás Maduro repeated on Tuesday an appeal made last Sunday by President Hugo Chávez to the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) to free "for nothing" the people kidnapped by them.

Maduro said in an interview with state-run TV channel VTV that the request to the Colombian guerrillas is but the ratification of a "historical position of Chávez government in favor of the peace process" in the neighboring country.
 
"We have had always one single position in respect of the Colombian armed conflict, and this position has been historically to pursue peace, in spite of the machinery of global disinformation to distort such a position," lamented the minister, according to Efe.

"The international right wing and hardcore leftist sectors or childish leftwing try to stage a misleading crusade," Maduro insisted on saying.