Ex-Colombian hostage to see son after years

A Colombian woman freed last week after six years as a rebel hostage arrived in Bogota on Sunday and headed for a reunion with her son Emmanuel, born in captivity but now in foster care.

A slightly dazed but smiling Clara Rojas arrived from Caracas, where she had been since Thursday when leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez brokered her release from the Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

"I am immensely moved to be here," said the 44-year-old Rojas, wearing red designer glasses and a pink jacket and carrying a bunch of white lilies.

Captured during her 2002 vice presidential campaign, Rojas gave birth to her son in April 2004 in a secret jungle camp.

When he was 8 months old the boy was turned over by the FARC to a peasant family in southern Colombia, where Rojas was being held. The family later handed him over to state child welfare authorities who put him in a Bogota foster home.

"I am told that Emmanuel sent me a present. I'm going to see what it is," she said. "I will visit him for a while later today and then have an Ajiaco (a hearty chicken soup popular in Bogota's chilly climate)."

She explained that she felt weak after a set of medical examinations in Caracas and would rest after being reunited with her child. She says she lost touch with the rebel fighter who fathered the boy.

Emmanuel is seen as a symbol of young victims of a war in which thousands of people are killed, maimed by land mines or displaced every year. He became a national obsession on New Year's Eve when the government revealed he was no longer in captivity.

The first release mission organized by Chavez in late December was to include the liberation of Emmanuel. The anti-American Venezuelan leader had to revamp the plan after the FARC admitted it no longer had the boy in custody.

SNAKES, TARANTULAS

Rojas was a centre-left politician when captured along with her running mate Ingrid Betancourt, a French-Colombian national and former presidential candidate who is still in captivity.

The two were chained up and had snakes and tarantulas thrown into their sleeping bunks to punish them after they tried to escape soon after their kidnapping.

"She knows I have immense respect and love for her," Rojas said. "Let's see to it that she is here with us soon."

Efforts to free FARC captives have intensified with French President Nicolas Sarkozy calling Betancourt's release a high foreign policy priority.

The outlawed rebel army holds hundreds of people for ransom and political leverage as part of its 4-decade-old war for Socialism.

Rojas was freed along with former Colombian Congresswoman Consuelo Gonzalez, who was snatched by the rebels in 2001. The handover of the two raised hopes for other hostages, including three American anti-drug contractors grabbed in 2003.

But the FARC is at a stalemate with conservative President Alvaro Uribe over conditions for swapping dozens of high-profile captives - including police officers, soldiers and politicians - for jailed rebels.

The guerrillas insist that Uribe pull troops from a large rural area in southwest Colombia where the hostages would be exchanged.

Uribe, whose father was killed in a botched FARC kidnapping more than 20 years ago, says creating such a safe-haven would allow the rebels to regroup after being pushed onto the defensive by his tough, U.S.-backed military policies.