(Adds byline, recasts with release delay, background) By Patrick Markey BOGOTA, Feb 1 (Reuters) - Colombia's FARC guerrillas will soon release four hostages, but military operations in the area have complicated the planned handover, a local journalist and a rebel commander told Telesur channel on Sunday. A Brazilian helicopter crew ferried a Red Cross delegation and a left-wing senator to pick up three captive police officers and one soldier in Colombia's southern jungles in the first of three operations planned for this week. "This operation is just beginning," Jorge Botero, a local journalist traveling with the commission, told Caracas-based Telesur. "This will be successful in the end despite these difficulties." A local FARC commander called Jairo Martinez also confirmed to Telesur the handover would take place shortly. The new releases have fueled speculation the weakened FARC rebels will free more captives to gain political leverage and restore their battered image. But talks with the government appear far off as both sides are deadlocked over demands. A second flight on Monday plans to lift out a politician held hostage for more than seven years and a third operation later in the week will receive another captive lawmaker from jungles near the remote Pacific coast. The defense ministry says military operations will be suspended in the areas of the handovers. Once a powerful army that held large swaths of Colombia, the FARC has been driven back into remote mountains and jungles after President Alvaro Uribe sent troops out to retake control and crush their four-decade-old insurgency. The FARC -- or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia -- was battered by setbacks last year, including the deaths of three top commanders, desertions and the rescue of a group of high-profile captives it hoped to use as bargaining chips. The rebels have demanded Uribe demilitarize an area roughly the size of New York City as a safe haven to guarantee talks with the government over swapping political hostages as a first step toward peace negotiations. Wary of past failed attempts to broker deals with the FARC, Uribe refuses rebel conditions saying it would allow the rebels to regroup in a zone key to arms and drug trafficking. But he has offered a smaller haven under international observation. (Reporting by Patrick Markey, editing by Anthony Boadle)
Police inspect the site of a bomb blast in a video store in Bogota January 27, 2009. A bomb exploded in an exclusive neighborhood in the north of Colombia's capital Bogota ...
