France says ex-hostage Betancourt to visit on Friday

By Francois Murphy

PARIS (Reuters) - French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt, who was rescued from her guerrilla captors in a surprise military operation, will visit France on Friday.

President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Thursday he and his wife, Carla, would be at the airport to receive Betancourt, 46, a dual national and former Colombian presidential candidate who was the highest-profile captive held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC.

Held in the Colombian jungle for six years, she was rescued along with 14 other hostages, including three U.S. citizens, in an operation in which Colombian soldiers posed as aid workers, fooling guerrillas into putting the captives onto a helicopter.

"She should be with us tomorrow by mid-afternoon," Sarkozy's chief of staff Claude Gueant told French television, adding that hearing of her release was "a great moment of joy".

The president's office said Sarkozy would be at the military airport at 4 p.m. local time (1400 GMT) to greet Betancourt and that he would be accompanied by some of the people who had campaigned for her release.

Betancourt's case has been followed closely in France, where successive governments have sought to help secure her release.

Sarkozy vowed after his 2007 election to make her liberation a priority and made several unsuccessful attempts to convince the FARC to set her free.

Shortly after her release, Betancourt thanked Sarkozy and his predecessor Jacques Chirac, as well as former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, for their efforts to help her, adding: "I dream of returning to France".

France has dispatched a plane with her relatives and Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner on board to meet her in Colombia, which Gueant said would bring Betancourt to France.

French media held their front pages as the news of Betancourt's release broke on Wednesday evening.

"Free," ran the headline of daily Le Parisien, along with a full-page picture of her smiling, wearing camouflage fatigues and a hat after her release.

"Ingrid Betancourt free at last," conservative broadsheet Le Figaro said on its front page, which featured the same picture.

Betancourt's French support committee, which has held demonstrations and vigils throughout her detention in jungle camps, celebrated her release with a rally in central Paris which police said was attended by at about a thousand people.

(Additional reporting by Sophie Louet; Editing by Matthew Jones)