Bid to free hostage could gild Sarkozy image

'They do lots of things for Ingrid'
Another French-Colombian hostage, Aida Botero de Duvaltier, died while captive to a far smaller Colombian rebel group, the Popular Liberation Army, which abducted the 67-year-old woman in March 2001. The family paid a ransom and in 2005 dropped 50,000 leaflets urging anyone with information about her to come forward.

Remains thought to be hers were found in 2006, but there was never a public campaign.

"There was nothing at all," said Madeleine Duvaltier, sister-in-law of the hostage. "They do lots of things for Ingrid Betancourt because it's Ingrid Betancourt. That's all."

Betancourt, abducted in 2002, is not a nobody. She was a presidential candidate in Colombia at the time of her abduction. And she was ensconced among the elite in France.

Betancourt's case "has become ... an (affair) of state in the sense that the French public considers her an idol and any president would take into account pressure from the French public," said Jacques Thomet. A former journalist in Bogota, Thomet is the author of "Ingrid Betancourt: Tales of the Heart or the State?"

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A botched attempt to free Betancourt was organized in 2003 under Villepin, then French foreign minister. It raised tensions between Paris and Bogota because Colombia was kept in the dark.

Betancourt's family here says the high-profile campaign may save her.

"With all this international pressure ... we know the FARC cannot allow anything irreparable to happen to Ingrid ...," Astrid Betancourt, the hostage's sister, told reporters Friday. "We cannot do anything but hail this gesture by France."

France has freed other high-profile hostages elsewhere in the world, including journalist Florence Aubenas, held in Iraq for 157 days and freed in 2005.

Researcher Michel Seurat, abducted in Lebanon in 1985, was killed. Villepin, the former French prime minister, also a close friend of Seurat's family, choked back tears as he received the remains in 2006.

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