France's foreign minister vowed to push ahead with efforts to free ailing French-Colombian hostage Ingrid Betancourt, even after her rebel captors rejected a mission trying to reach her.
Bernard Kouchner said Wednesday he would go to the Colombian region soon to prepare another, "different," mission, despite the failure of the joint French-Spanish-Swiss attempt begun last week.
Betancourt has spent six years in the jungle and is believed to be suffering serious liver problems. A dual French-Colombian citizen who was campaigning for Colombia's presidency when she was kidnapped, she has become a cause celebre in France.
A French government jet spent days on a Bogota airstrip with doctors hoping to reach Betancourt and other hostages, until the rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, said Tuesday they would no longer unilaterally free captives. They said Betancourt would only be freed as part of an exchange of rebel prisoners for hostages if the Colombian government meets their demands.
The French government responded by announcing it would pull out the mission.
"It is a great disappointment," Kouchner told reporters after a Cabinet meeting Wednesday, but without the FARC's approval this mission would have had "no chance."
"We must take into account" the FARC's rejection of the mission, "but that does not mean that we are abandoning (efforts); not at all," Kouchner said.
"We will continue one way or another," he said. "We must find her."
Meanwhile, a senior Swiss diplomat said the efforts to reach Betancourt were partly undermined by the publicity surrounding the mission.
"All this noise is probably not very helpful when you want to reach a humanitarian accord," said Thomas Greminger, whose Foreign Ministry department supplied two members of the mission. He said quiet diplomacy might have achieved more than the high-profile mission launched last week.
Betancourt's ex-husband mourned the failed mission but said it uncovered a few new hints about her condition, including signs that she might not be as sick as earlier believed.
"Her physical condition is extremely weak and it's true that she suffers from liver problems. But we don't know if she has hepatitis," Fabrice Delloye told Associated Press Television News in Paris on Wednesday. Earlier reports said she was suffering from hepatitis B.
Delloye said that doctors on the mission obtained clearer information about her condition through talks with Luis Eladio Perez, a recently released hostage who had been held with Betancourt.
"We are deeply, deeply sorry," Delloye said. "It was a hand we were giving to FARC ... to try to find a solution, and once again they were not there."
Delloye said the plane carrying the French-led group would leave for France and Switzerland sometime Wednesday.
The FARC repeated its demand that the Colombian government demilitarize two counties as the first step toward a swap of hundreds of imprisoned rebels for dozens of hostages held by the guerrillas. Only as part of such an exchange, they said, would Betancourt go free.
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, whose own father was killed by the rebels, has insisted that he will not pull soldiers out of the zones in southwestern Colombia.
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APTN correspondent Jeffrey Schaeffer in Paris and AP writer Frank Jordans in Switzerland contributed to this report.
