Sarkozy appeals for Betancourt release

PARIS, France (CNN) -- French President Nicolas Sarkozy has made a direct appeal to a Colombian rebel group to release a French citizen held hostage for the last five years.

Video footage of Ingrid Betancourt -- who also holds Colombian citizenship -- emerged last week showing her looking emaciated and worn out.

Betancourt, who was kidnapped in 2002 while she was campaigning for the Colombian presidency, has become a cause celebre in France.

Sarkozy made an appeal to her captors -- the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC -- on French television late Wednesday.

"I have a dream: To see Ingrid among her family this Christmas," the French president said, in an appeal on the television station TF1.

Sarkozy directed his impassioned appeal to the leader of the FARC rebels, Manuel Marulanda, to release the French-Colombian politician.

"You must save a woman in danger of death. You can show the world that FARC understands humanitarian imperatives. Monsieur Marulanda, you carry a great responsibility," Sarkozy said.

The plight of Betancourt, who is a French citizen through an earlier marriage, was further highlighted by her son Lorenzo, who unveiled a giant still picture from the recent footage of his mother in front of Paris City Hall on Wednesday.

"I think the French president will do everything he can to help us, but he must make all efforts possible as soon as possible. We are at a turning point, and maybe a last turning point," he told French television at the unveiling ceremony, hours before Sarkozy's address.

Betancourt was among a group of 45 hostages that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was attempting to release through a prisoner exchange deal which would have seen 500 FARC guerrillas set free.

The exchange bid collapsed, however, after the Colombian president accused Chavez of breaking an agreement. E-mail to a friend