Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner will meet Colombian President Álvaro Uribe in Bogotá before visiting Ecuador and Venezuela, whose left-wing President Hugo Chávez has sought to play a mediating role in hostage releases.Kouchner “will re-evaluate the hostage situation with the three heads of state and stress the urgency of a humanitarian solution leading to the freeing of those held by the FARC,” the French foreign ministry said in a statement.Uribe expressed that there’s no place for Chávez in possible negotions, after French President Sarkozy Thursday asked the Venezuelan President to be available for negotiations. “The only institutions that can help negotiations are the Catholic church and European delegates,” the President said on LA FM. “We love to talk to the French Foreign Ministe, but we can only repeat this point of view” he said later, after meeting the country’s High Commissioner of Peace.Betancourt, a dual French-Colombian national, was seized by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in 2002 while campaigning for the presidency, and has been held by the Marxist rebels ever since.The FARC rejected one French plan to release Betancourt this month, expressing annoyance with Uribe’s handling of the proposed handover.Kouchner will head to Ecuador on Tuesday and Caracas on Wednesday, the government said. He will also seek to ease tensions between Colombia and its two neighbours, raised by an anti-FARC raid by Colombian forces into Ecuador in March.
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