A French mission to aid a French-Colombian hostage appeared to founder soon after it began, with a senior rebel announcing that she and other captives will remain “in our camps” until Colombia and the US release jailed guerrillas.
A French government jet landed at an air base in Bogota on Thursday carrying two diplomats and two doctors, said Colombia’s armed forces chief, General Freddy Padilla. But Padilla said the French team, which hopes at least to offer medical treatment to hostage Ingrid Betancourt, doesn’t even know where she is.
Rodrigo Granda, known as the “foreign minister” for Colombia’s main rebel group, suggested the French had no deal for the release of Betancourt, 46, who was kidnapped while running for president of Colombia six years ago.
“Only as a result of a prisoner exchange will those who are held captive in our camps go free,” Granda said in a communique posted on Thursday on a Web site friendly with the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia or FARC.
“It’s unacceptable that more gestures of peace are asked for,” he said in an apparent reference to the unilateral freeing of six hostages earlier this year by the rebels.
The rebel group has insisted that as part of any prisoner exchange, two FARC leaders imprisoned in the US must be let go. They are Nayibe “Sonia” Rojas, convicted last year in a US court of exporting cocaine and Ricardo Palmera -- whose nom de guerre is Simon Trinidad -- who was convicted in a hostage-taking conspiracy.
The FARC, which is holding three US contractors who were kidnapped in 2003 when their plane went down in southern Colombia, wants hundreds of rebels jailed in Colombia freed as part of the swap.
Betancourt’s plight has taken on added urgency since another hostage who spent months with her was released in February and said she has hepatitis B and a tropical skin ailment.
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