A French medical team arrived in Colombia today on a mission to try to treat rebel hostage Ingrid Betancourt, a French-Colombian politician who is believed seriously ill after six years in guerrilla captivity.
A successful mission would be the first direct contact in years with Ms Betancourt, a former presidential candidate who is the highest profile hostage held in jungle camps by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or Farc guerrillas.
President Alvaro Uribe has said he will halt military operations in the area once the medical team has the location where it will treat Ms Betancourt, but it was unclear whether the French government had managed to contact the guerrillas and won their support for the mission.
An aircraft carrying the team arrived early this morning at a military air base in the capital Bogota, a Colombian air force official said.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has made the release of Ms Betancourt, a former lawmaker captured in 2002, a foreign policy priority. But so far few details have been revealed about the mission.
"I have some news, but given the sensitivity of the matter, I can not reveal anything," Mr Sarkozy said during a visit to Bucharest.
Latin America's oldest left-wing insurgency, the Farc has been weakened by Mr Uribe's US-backed security crackdown, and violence from Colombia's four-decade conflict has ebbed as troops have pushed rebels into more remote areas.
But attempts to reach a broad deal for the release of 40 hostages in exchange for jailed rebel fighters have been deadlocked over a Farc demand that Mr Uribe pull back troops from an area the size of New York City to facilitate negotiations.
Mr Uribe, whose father was killed in a botched Farc kidnapping two decades ago, refuses to cede, saying that would allow the Farc to regroup. He has offered a smaller negotiating zone with an international observation team.