Caracas  - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Friday took credit for paving the way for this week's hostage releases in Colombia.

Chavez recalled that former Colombian regional legislator Sigifredo Lopez, who was released Thursday after six years in captivity, thanked him for his efforts to secure the releases.

"Venezuela ... wants peace for Colombia, wants freedom for all," Chavez said.

"We opened this way, which was shut off on all sides, and those people (hostages) had been forgotten, practically left for dead. You could hear some voices, their families calling out, but nobody paid attention to them," he added.

"Then I got very involved and I almost headed into the jungle in Colombia," Chavez told businessmen in Caracas.

For several months in 2007, the left-wing populist Chavez mediated talks between Colombian authorities and the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Colombian President Alvaro Uribe eventually called off the mediation effort after Chavez spoke out of turn with a Colombian general.

This week FARC released three police officers, a soldier and two politicians, but still detains other hostages seized during its decades-long fight against the government. (dpa)