Colombia troops rescue Betancourt, 3 US hostages

Bogota: Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt and three US hostages held for years by guerrillas were rescued on Wednesday after soldiers posing as aid workers duped their captors into putting them on a helicopter.

The stunning rescue - without a shot being fired - was a huge blow to Latin America's oldest insurgency, already badly weakened by President Alvaro Uribe's US-backed campaign to defeat the rebels and the cocaine trade fueling the conflict.

Betancourt, 46, a dual French-Colombian citizen and former presidential candidate was the highest-profile captive held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC, and had been a held in the Colombian jungle for six years.

"I believe that this is a sign of peace for Colombia, that we can find peace," Betancourt said, thanking the Colombian military for her rescue and weeping as she made her first public comments, carried on Colombian radio station Caracol.

Minutes later a pale but smiling Betancourt landed at Bogota's air force base, walking down the stairs of the plane and hugging her mother, Yolanda Pulecio, on the runway.

Betancourt had not been seen since a rebel video broadcast last year in which she appeared gaunt and depressed in a jungle camp. The video provoked outrage in Colombia and overseas as former fellow hostages later told how she had been chained up after repeated escape attempts.

She said the hostages were forced onto a helicopter handcuffed, but were then amazed to see their captors disarmed as the aircraft took off, describing an action film ending to her captivity when one army officer said: "You are free."

Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said all of the freed hostages were in reasonably good health despite having been held in harsh conditions and suffering jungle illnesses.

Santos said Colombian military intelligence had infiltrated the guerrilla movement in the southern jungle province of Guaviare, where soldiers posed as members of a fictitious non-governmental organization that supposedly would fly the hostages by helicopter to a camp to meet a rebel commander.

"It was an intelligence operation comparable with the greatest epics of human history, but without a drop of blood being spilled, without one weapon being fired," Uribe said.

Fifteen long-held kidnap victims were rescued in all, including Betancourt and the three Americans. Two guerrillas were captured in the operation, officials said.

The FARC has been holding about 40 high-profile hostages it has sought to exchange for jailed rebels. But attempts to reach negotiations over their release were stalled as Uribe's government and the FARC.

Americans en route home

The freed Americans all worked for Northrop Grumman and were captured in 2003 after their light aircraft crashed in the jungles while on a counternarcotics operation.

The three former Defense Department contract workers, Marc Gonsalves, Keith Stansell and Thomas Howes, were on their way back to the United States on Wednesday evening, the Colombian government said.

US President George W. Bush spoke by telephone with Uribe and praised the rescue operation.

"President Bush congratulated President Uribe, telling him he is a 'strong leader.' President Uribe thanked President Bush for his support and confidence in the Government of Colombia," Gordon Johndroe, White House National Security Council spokesman, said in Washington.

In Paris, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said: "Today a nightmare of more than six years has ended." Sarkozy, who had had made vigorous efforts to seek Betancourt's freedom, dispatched his Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, to Colombia.

"I am filled with happiness," Betancourt's sister, Astrid, told Colombian radio. "These have been long years of waiting."

Betancourt was kidnapped by the FARC while campaigning for the presidency in 2002 when, against the advice of the armed forces, she traveled along a rural road in southern Colombia and was stopped at a rebel roadblock.

The presidents of Chile, Brazil and Peru praised Uribe for the rescue operation as a gain for peace and democracy.