FRANCE:Ingrid Betancourt, the hostage held by Colombia's Farc rebels, may not be as ill as previously thought, but Paris still wants a doctor to visit and treat her, France's foreign minister said yesterday.
France has sent an urgent medical mission to Colombia to get access to Ms Betancourt, a French-Colombian citizen who has been held in the jungle for six years. So far, Paris has not received rebel permission to visit their secret camps.
Ms Betancourt, a former Colombian presidential candidate with dual French-Colombian nationality, was kidnapped by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, better known by its Spanish acronym Farc, while campaigning in February 2002.
France has said she is very sick, suffering from hepatitis and other illnesses, and her son has said she will die within days unless she receives a blood transfusion.
"We have the impression not only that she is alive, but that she is doing better than was said. But I could be wrong," French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner told LCI television.
"In any case, we are doing everything as if we had to free her immediately," he said, adding that Ms Betancourt's health must have worsened. His source of information was not immediately clear.
Mr Kouchner said France was standing by its mission to gain access to Ms Betancourt: "We are not going to leave after 24 hours. . . We are waiting for this signal from the Farc." A French plane carrying a medical team arrived on Thursday and remains parked on the tarmac at a Bogotá military base. The mission reportedly left without any prior agreement with the Farc to gain access to its jungle camps.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, whose official neutrality has been key to securing hostage operations with the FARC in the past, said yesterday it has had no contact with its rebel sources about the French mission.
"I was in contact with a guerrilla captured recently who told me that she does not have hepatitis, but she has amoebiasis. She has stomach pains and rejects food and naturally she is depressed and anxious," Ms Betancourt's mother, Yolanda Pulecio, told a Peruvian radio station. "That relieves me in a way because hepatitis would be serious. I am sure we will be able to finally come out of this soon," she said.
Ms Betancourt, and three US contract workers snatched by rebels in 2003, are among 40 key hostages held by Farc for political leverage. Commanders say they want to exchange them for jailed rebel fighters.
Latin America's largest and longest-running left-wing insurgency, Farc have been driven back by the president Alvaro Uribe's US-funded security campaign but remain a potent force in remote, rural areas where state presence is still weak.
- (Reuters)