Colombia to ask Sarkozy to take part in meeting with rebels

Dec 4, 2007, 19:22 GMT

Bogota - The Colombian government will ask French President Nicolas Sarkozy to attend a meeting with leftist rebels or send an envoy to discuss a potential exchange of prisoners, a legislator said Tuesday.

The most high-profile hostage held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, holds dual French-Colombian citizenship, and Sarkozy has made her release one of his foreign policy priorities.

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe is said to have told legislators that he will send Peace Commissioner Luis Carlos Restrepo to Paris with the proposal, in the wake of the truncated mediation of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

The president of the Peace Commission in the Colombian House of Representatives, Mauricio Lizcano, cited Uribe as saying that his government wants Sarkozy to intervene more directly in the case, to maintain an international element in talks with FARC.

Lizcano - whose father, the former legislator Oscar Lizcano, is one of the hostages held by FARC - said Restrepo would travel to Paris on Tuesday.

The legislator said Uribe plans to allow Restrepo to make efforts towards arranging a personal meeting with FARC leaders. The only condition would be that the rebels do not demand a demilitarized zone for the meeting.

Chavez worked towards a humanitarian exchange of some 50 hostages in the hands of FARC for at least 500 rebels held in prison, but Uribe terminated his mandate after he spoke to a Colombian general when Uribe had specifically asked him not to.

Last week, proof of life of 16 hostages, including Betancourt and three US contractors also held by FARC, was found in the hands of arrested rebels.