Sarkozy says he'd collect hostage Betancourt

CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Thursday he was willing to go in person to collect ailing hostage Ingrid Betancourt if she were released by Colombia's FARC guerrillas.

The French-Colombian politician, held in the jungle for six years, was said to be "very sick" by fellow hostages freed this week.

Sarkozy told a news conference in Cape Town after arriving for a visit to South Africa: "I appeal to FARC to release her immediately. It's a matter of life and death, a matter of a humanitarian emergency. They cannot let this woman die."

On Wednesday, the Marxist guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, freed four people in a deal brokered by Venezuela's left-wing President Hugo Chavez.

Sarkozy said he had spoken to Chavez about Betancourt's case, adding: "I am ready ... to go myself to the border between Venezuela and Colombia to fetch Ingrid Betancourt, if that is a condition imposed by FARC," he said.

Betancourt, who has dual nationality, and three U.S. contractors are among high-profile hostages held in secret jungle camps by FARC.

She was last seen in a rebel video released last year in which she looked gaunt and despondent, sitting at a wooden bench in the jungle. In a letter to her mother she wrote: "We live like the dead."

The hostages freed this week said Betancourt, a former Colombian presidential candidate whose case is a policy priority for the French government, was mistreated, kept in chains, had a serious liver problem and was mentally exhausted.

Her husband, Juan Carlos Lecompte, told Reuters at his Bogota home she was in poor condition.

"That is why it is urgent to find a way to free her," he said.

Sarkozy praised the efforts of Chavez in negotiating the release of the captives and said he had asked the Venezuelan leader to use "all his influence" to save Betancourt.

"FARC must know and understand that the suffering they are inflicting on Ingrid Betancourt is suffering inflicted on the whole of France," he said.

(Reporting by Emmanuel Jarry; writing by Andrew Roche)