France Calls Off Mission To Treat Hostage
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
BOGOTA, Colombia — France called off a humanitarian mission yesterday to treat and possibly free ailing hostage Ingrid Betancourt after Colombian rebels said they wouldn’t unilaterally release any more captives. France’s Foreign Ministry said late yesterday 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 Ms. Betancourt, who was said to be depressed and suffering from hepatitis C. In a four-paragraph statement released yesterday, 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 Ms. Betancourt go free.
