France calls off hostage rescue mission

updated 9:03 p.m. ET April 8, 2008

PARIS - France called off a humanitarian mission Tuesday to treat and possibly free ailing hostage Ingrid Betancourt after Colombian rebels said they wouldn't unilaterally release any more captives.

The rebel statement seemed intended to force Colombian President Alvaro Uribe to make the next move. It also leaves Betancourt and dozens of other high-profile hostages languishing in jungle prisons and makes the prospect of peace talks ever more remote.

France's Foreign Ministry said late Tuesday that there was no longer any reason to keep the mission by France, Spain and Switzerland in Colombia. A French government plane has been waiting on a Bogota airstrip for days with doctors hoping to reach Betancourt, who was said to be depressed and suffering from hepatitis C.

In a four-paragraph statement released Tuesday, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia repeated what they have insisted on since 2005: that the government demilitarize two counties as the first step toward a broad hostage-prisoner swap. Only as part of such an exchange, they said, would Betancourt go free.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy's office said he is "deeply disappointed."

"He wants to assure our compatriot's family — as well as those of all the hostages — that his determination to win their liberation remains as strong as ever," Sarkozy's office said.

Uribe, whose own father was killed by the rebels, has consistently rejected pulling soldiers out of the zones in southwestern Colombia, recalling how the FARC used a demilitarized zone ceded by his predecessor to create mayhem during failed peace talks.

Hostages could languish
If no one gives in — and stubbornness is a key trait of both sides — Betancourt and dozens of other hostages likely will languish in jungle camps for a long time to come.

The rebel high command describes all this as a lost opportunity in its statement, which was written Friday, the day after a French-led medical team landed in Bogota hoping to save the French-Colombian politician's life.

"If at the beginning of the year, President Uribe had demilitarized Pradera and Florida for 45 days, Ingrid Betancourt and soldiers and the jailed guerrillas would now have regained their freedom and it would be a victory for everyone," the rebels said.

The leftist rebels have kept up their fight against elected Colombian governments for 44 years, and were unmoved by media frenzy over the effort launched by France, Spain and Switzerland. Nothing had been coordinated before the jet landed, according to the message from the FARC's ruling secretariat.

"We don't respond to blackmail nor media campaigns," the secretariat said. "The French medical mission is inappropriate."

Astrid Betancourt, the hostage's sister, saw a ray of hope in FARC's position.

"The FARC believes there's no reason for the humanitarian mission but is leaving the door open to negotiations," she told The Associated Press in Paris by phone.

Uribe has given up ground
Uribe has given some ground before. In December 2005, eight months after the rebels called for the military to leave the two counties, Uribe agreed to a proposal from France, Switzerland and Spain to demilitarize 110 square miles (180 square kilometers) of southwest Colombia. But the FARC held firm to its demand for an area more than four times bigger.

The rebels also have made some conciliatory moves — noting in their statement that they have unilaterally released six hostages this year as a "gesture of generosity and political will." But they ruled out additional unilateral releases.

"Rebels imprisoned in the jails of Colombia and the United States are our priority," said the rebel statement, posted on a sympathetic Web site.

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