The French ambassador in Colombia yesterday denied a report in a Brazilian magazine that a group of French officials had arrived in Brazil's Amazon and tried to negotiate the release of kidnapped Colombian former presidential candidate Ms Ingrid Betancourt with leftist Colombian rebels.
Ambassador Daniel Parfait said, however, that a French medical team landed in neighboring Brazil earlier this month for an unspecified humanitarian mission.
Carta Capitalweekly said in its weekend edition the group had had arrived under a false pretext and tried to swap Ms Betancourt, who has spent nearly 17 months in captivity and has a French passport, for arms. It cited Brazilian intelligence sources, police and witnesses.
Ms Betancourt, 41, is among the most prominent kidnap victims in Colombia. The abduction of the mother of two, who was raised in Paris and once appeared in a glossy spread in Vanity Fairmagazine, has attracted great attention in France.
Brazil's federal police told Reuters a French Hercules C-130 military transport plane, en route to French Guiana, had requested landing for technical reasons at the Manaus airport and left on July 13 after four days in Brazil. They gave no other details.
The magazine said the group of 11 Frenchmen, including a senior Foreign Ministry official, did not allow Brazilian police to search the plane, citing diplomatic immunity.
Part of the group traveled to the jungle for several days and hired a small plane to pick up four people there, but the four were never picked up. Two Frenchmen stayed behind, Carta said.
When asked who was on the plane that landed in Brazil, Parfait told reporters in Bogota, "There in the Hercules there was a medical team, because we're talking about a humanitarian operation."
"I want to formally deny that there was any contact, and much less negotiation, between the French authorities and the FARC," he said, specifically denying any attempt to free Ms Betancourt.