COLOMBIA:
The Truth Behind Ingrid Betancourt 'Rescue Mission'

Constanza Vieira


BOGOTA,  (IPS) - An exclusive journalistic investigation by IPS sought to get at the truth behind a supposed attempt by France to rescue former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, who was kidnapped by the FARC guerrillas two years ago as of next Monday.

In July 2003, the French government sent a C-130 Hercules military transport plane into the Amazon jungle in northern Brazil, on a secret mission to rescue Betancourt, who holds dual Colombian-French citizenship.

The incident prompted an apology to Brazil from the French government, and the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) denied that it had ever intended to release Betancourt, the group's highest-profile hostage.

Seven well-placed sources who spoke on condition of anonymity helped IPS piece together the story of what really happened.

According to the sources, in June 2003, the French government and FARC agreed on an ''unofficial'' humanitarian operation: a meeting between a senior French Foreign Ministry official and rebel commander Raúl Reyes, the insurgent group's spokesman in contacts with the United Nations and the international community.

Pierre-Henri Guignard, one of the French Foreign Ministry's highest-ranking officials, was to take part in the meeting, accompanied by two other diplomats: a French embassy official and Fabrice Delloye, Betancourt's ex-husband.

France's objective was to verify that Betancourt was still alive, after months of silence from FARC, the main rebel group involved in Colombia's four-decade civil war.

The evidence consisted of a video filmed in early June, in which Betancourt appeared. Reyes was to hand the video over to the French diplomats, and it was to be made public in France.

FARC was interested in the meeting because it wanted to be heard directly by delegates of a European Union (EU) nation, in order to express ''the truth'' about what is occurring in Colombia -- a vision that differs radically from the version set forth by the right-wing government of President Alvaro Uribe.

The insurgent group also wanted to complain that the EU had placed it on its international list of ''terrorist organisations'' in 2002, in the wake of the Sep. 11, 2001 terror attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.

FARC is keen on meeting with delegates of the U.N., the Rio Group -- the highest-level Latin American political forum -- and the EU, one of the sources told IPS.

In statements to the press, Delloye -- who was not interviewed by IPS for this story -- insinuated that proof that Betancourt was still alive was a condition for any negotiations with FARC.

But at no point was the possible release of Betancourt agreed as part of the operation, in which the French diplomats travelled from Quito, the capital of Ecuador, to Esmeraldas on that country's Pacific coast.

From there they went to an Ecuadorian village on the border with Colombia, where a messenger sent by FARC told them they had to cross the border and travel several hours into Colombian territory to meet with Reyes at his camp in the southern province of Putumayo.

But the French diplomats did not believe that entering Colombian territory was included in the initial agreement.

Instead of continuing into Colombia, they wrote Reyes a letter, and returned to Quito to consult with the Foreign Ministry on the possibility of entering Colombian territory.

Three days later they received instructions from the French Foreign Ministry to cross the border.

''If they hadn't turned back to Quito, the meeting would have taken place, in Putumayo,'' a source close to the families of the hostages held by FARC remarked to IPS.

But ''a mistake'' by the French ambassador in Bogota, Daniel Parfait, ruined the mission, according to a diplomatic source, who said the plan was discovered through the tapping of the embassy's telephone lines, by either the Uribe administration or the U.S. secret services.

Uribe was informed, and had the operation, that was to involve a meeting between the French diplomats and Reyes in southern Colombia, aborted.

He did so by alerting Betancourt's family on Jul. 3 that the former presidential candidate was to be released.

According to the sources, Uribe himself told Yolanda Pulecio and Astrid Betancourt -- Ingrid's mother and sister -- that a campesino (peasant farmer) had been contacted by FARC to say that the hostage was seriously ill and that they would hand her over.

The president also added that Catholic Church leaders had put the campesino in contact with him.

On her own initiative, Betancourt's sister, who works at the French Embassy in Bogota, then requested humanitarian assistance from the French government.

Taken by surprise, Paris sent a C-130 Hercules transporter with medical and rescue personnel and equipment on Jul. 9 to Manaus in the Amazon jungle, the large Brazilian city closest to the Colombian border.

But the ''unofficial'' presence of the Hercules sparked a diplomatic row between Brazil and France.

Brazil ordered the plane out, complaining that it had not been informed of any rescue mission, and the French government was forced to make a formal apology. The confusing incident was widely covered by the international press.

FARC, in the meantime, denied any intention to free Betancourt.

In the end, the French diplomats who were to meet with Reyes lost contact with the rebel leader's emissary, and the mission fell through.

Betancourt's husband Juan Carlos Lecompte, who has taken over the leadership of the former presidential candidate's Green Oxygen Party since her capture, admitted that he was familiar with the events described to IPS.

However, he said he did not know whether the plan was discovered through the tapping of telephones in the French Embassy in Bogota.

He also told IPS that he was not sure it was Guignard who was to take part in the meeting with Reyes, although other sources confirmed that it was.

But Lecompte did say that Guignard was present in Manaus a few days after the failed contact between the French diplomats and Reyes was to take place.

Last week, Delloye, Betancourt's ex-husband, did not attempt to conceal the family's bitterness in an interview with the French daily Le Monde. ''We have been manipulated by Uribe,'' he complained.

''I wonder,'' Delloye told the newspaper, ''if Uribe and his (intelligence) services did not manipulate this whole thing to sabotage the contact planned between the FARC and the U.N. in Brazilian territory'' -- a meeting suggested in mid-2003 by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in response to a letter from FARC.

In a statement released in late July, FARC said its ultimate goal in contacting the French government was to reach an agreement on a humanitarian swap of captives held by the guerrillas ''for purely political reasons'' in exchange for imprisoned rebels.

Last November, IPS attempted to find out from Reyes whether he had really planned to meet with a group of French diplomats, and received the response: ''Ask the French about that.''

Two months later, guerrilla commander Simón Trinidad, one of the rebels in charge of seeking negotiations for a humanitarian swap, was arrested in Quito.

On Jan. 13, FARC stated that Trinidad's ''clandestine mission'' in Quito was to find a ''suitable venue'' for a meeting with Annan's personal representative in Colombia, James LeMoyne.

But Trinidad's arrest, according to FARC, frustrated ''the meeting planned with representatives of the French government, which was aimed at coming up with a definitive solution to the captivity of Ingrid Betancourt and of the rest of the prisoners of war, through a humanitarian swap.''

The French government and the U.N. spokesperson in Bogota, Volker Petzoldt, denied that any meetings had been planned.

The video in which Betancourt appeared was broadcast on Aug. 30 by a Colombian TV newscast.

Betancourt, 42, a former senator who ran for president in the May 2003 elections even though she was already a FARC hostage at the time, has been declared an honorary citizen of 1,000 cities around the world, most of them in France.

On Saturday, Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni will name Betancourt honorary citizen of the Italian capital, while Bogota, where she was born, will name her a citizen of honour, as part of a ''day of solidarity for the life and freedom of kidnapping victims in Colombia''.

Paris has offered refuge to FARC guerrillas who would be released from prison if the Colombian government were to agree to negotiate a swap of perhaps 300 to 400 imprisoned insurgents for 21 civilian hostages -- mainly politicians -- and 37 members of the military and police held captive by the rebels.

FARC says the politicians and soldiers and police are ''being held for exclusively political reasons,'' thus differentiating them from the roughly 800 private citizens -- according to official estimates -- that the group is holding for ransom, one of its key sources of financing.

The captives that FARC has offered to swap include three U.S. citizens who were on an intelligence mission as part of Plan Colombia, the country's largely U.S.-financed anti-drug and counterinsurgency strategy, when they were captured.

But Washington refuses to negotiate an exchange for the three U.S. captives, while Uribe demands a halt to all kidnappings and a guarantee that any imprisoned rebels who might be released would not take up arms again, as a condition to negotiating a humanitarian swap.