Sarkozy's message to the guerilla

It is a message from a president to the Colombian guerrilla. The appeal by French President to the Colombian rebel leader Manuel Marulanda to release a woman who has been held hostage for nearly six years.

“Monsieur Marulanda, you know I don’t share your ideas and I condemn your methods,” Mr. Sarkozy said in a video .

“But I solemnly ask you to release Ingrid Betancourt"

“I have a dream: to see Ingrid with her family at Christmas,” the president added. “Monsieur Manuel Marulanda, you can make this dream come true. You can save this woman. You can show the world that the FARC understand humanitarian imperatives.”

Christmas Day will be Ms. Betancourt’s 46th birthday. Ms. Betancourt, a French-Colombian, who was kidnapped by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, while campaigning for the Colombian presidency in 2002, has made headlines sporadically over the years. Moreover, She was kidnapped in San Jose Del Guaviare, a city controled by FARC.

But the release last week of a letter to her children, Melanie and Lorenzo, and her mother,Yolanda Pulecio along with a videotape showing her looking pale, shook France and gave a new sense of urgency to the importance of her liberation.

In the 12-page letter, Ms. Betancourt described how she was losing her will to live. Her only joy, she said, is the personal messages her family transmits to her over the radio.

Because of that, France International Radio let her children broad radio messages each day.

And Mr. Sarkozy had his own message for Ms. Betancourt, this one broadcast on Colombian radio: “Ingrid, we will never leave you. I beg you to have confidence. We will get there. You have to hang in there, because your family is waiting for you.”