CAPE TOWN, Feb 28 (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)