France to launch new bid for Colombia hostage release
PARIS (AFP) — France is to launch a fresh bid Monday in its campaign to free Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt, held hostage in the jungle by leftist rebels, the foreign ministry said.
Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner will meet Colombian President Alvaro Uribe in Bogota before visiting Ecuador and Venezuela, whose left-wing President Hugo Chavez has sought to play a mediating role in hostage releases.
Kouchner "will re-evaluate the hostage situation with the three heads of state and stress the urgency of a humanitarian solution leading to the freeing of those held by the FARC," the French foreign ministry said in a statement.
Betancourt, a dual French-Colombian national, was seized by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in 2002 while campaigning for the presidency, and has been held by the Marxist rebels ever since.
Pictures released in November showed her looking frail and the French government has warned that she may be gravely ill.
The FARC rejected one French plan to release Betancourt this month, expressing annoyance with Uribe's handling of the proposed handover.
The FARC has been fighting the Bogota government for more than four decades and is believed to hold hundreds of captives.
Kouchner will head to Ecuador on Tuesday and Caracas on Wednesday, the government said. He will also seek to ease tensions between Colombia and its two neighbours, raised by an anti-FARC raid by Colombian forces into Ecuador in March.
