Madeleine's Mother Makes Earnest Plea to Abductor

The mother of missing Madeleine McCann made a plea to her daughter's abductor to return her, saying: "It is not too late to give her back."

It has been 62 days since the British four-year-old disappeared from her bed in a Portuguese holiday apartment.

Mother Kate McCann and her husband, Gerry, spoke recently about coping without their daughter.

Mr McCann, a consultant cardiologist, said: "Every day is hard. Every day is very, very tough. Madeleine has such a strong personality that it's really difficult not having her with us."

When asked if the couple will still be in the Algarve at Christmas, Mrs McCann, a locum GP, replied: "I think at the moment we are just taking one day at a time. We are not looking that far ahead.

Her husband added: "We are committed to staying and we feel closer to Madeleine here. Also, as it has been such as an active investigation, with so much information coming through, and for the time-being we would like to stay here. It is more practical. For the foreseeable future we will remain here. We will review that."

Mr McCann, 39, said the couple, from Rothley, Leicestershire, was "not capable" of returning to work as doctors at present.

"We still feel a lot can be done by ourselves," he said. "What we don't want is to look back in another three or four months and say we wish had done this."

When asked why Madeleine had generated so much international media attention, Mr McCann replied: "There are a number of circumstances, and I think that the fact that the abduction of foreign children in a foreign country played a part.

"The other aspect of this is that we and our family and friends have decided to campaign to maximise the media exposure, and electronic media which started a chain, and that had a huge impact over the first 24 hours."

The McCann family recently moved out of the Portuguese holiday resort from where Madeleine was abducted. Packing their belongings along with thousands of letters and cards of support from around the world, Madeleine's parents moved to a nearby property with their two-year-old twins, Sean and Amelie.

The couple have held onto their Catholic faith throughout their ordeal of searching for Madeleine, regularly attending a local Catholic church as well as travelling to Rome to meet Pope Benedict XVI, who prayed for their daughter.