PARIS, Sept 20, 2007 (AFP) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy will meet with Colombian counterpart Alvaro Uribe on Monday to discuss the fate of hostages held by rebels including prominent Franco-Colombian Ingrid Betancourt, his spokesman said Thursday.

Sarkozy will hold talks with Uribe on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting in New York after Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez offered to mediate a solution between Bogota and the rebels.

PARIS, Sept 16, 2007 (AFP) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy is ready to travel to Colombia if such a visit can help win the release of hostages held by Marxist rebels, his spokesman said Sunday.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Saturday said he was ready to play the role of go-between for Bogota and suggested that Sarkozy too could step in to find a solution.

'If it's necessary, I think that he will not hesitate, if it can be useful and if it's the appropriate moment,' said presidential spokesman David Martinon, when asked about a possible visit.

CARACAS, Sept 15, 2007 (AFP) - Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez Saturday pressed his efforts to play a role as intermediary with Marxist FARC rebels, urging his Colombian counterpart to let him meet in Colombia with the guerillas' chief, and suggesting France's leader could join the talks.

'President (Alvaro) Uribe asked me to help. I want to help. I make the formal request before the world: let me talk with (Manuel) Marulanda in Colombia,' Chavez said on television, naming the head of the guerrilla movement.

CARACAS, Sept 15, 2007 (AFP) - Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chavez Saturday asked his Colombian counterpart to let him meet with the chief of Colombia's Marxist FARC rebels to discuss a hostage swap, and suggested French leader Nicolas Sarkozy could join the talks.

'President (Alvaro) Uribe asked me to help him. I want to help him. I make a formal request to him before the world: let me talk with (Manuel) Marulanda in Colombia,' Chavez said on television, naming the head of the guerrilla movement.

BOGOTA, Sept 7, 2007 (AFP) - The International Committee of the Red Cross said Friday that it had recovered five bodies thought to belong to a group of 11 hostages killed in rebel custody in June.

'We have recovered five bodies, including one found yesterday (Thursday),' spokesman for the ICRC in Colombia Yves Heller told AFP.

'We think there are more remains in the area and we are working very hard to find them,' he said.

PARIS, Sept 3, 2007 (AFP) - France Monday hailed the efforts of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to secure the release of 45 hostages held by the Colombian rebel group FARC, including the French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt.

'We salute the efforts of President Chavez to help conclude a humanitarian accord,' said foreign ministry spokeswoman Pascale Andreani. 'We urge the FARC to make the necessary moves to allow the hostages in Colombia to be released without delay.'

CARACAS, Sept 2, 2007 (AFP) - President Hugo Chavez said Sunday he wants to meet in Venezuela with Colombian guerrilla leader Manuel Marulanda to discuss a hostage exchange between the guerillas and the Colombian government.

'Last night I sent a message to Marulanda. A new message, because earlier I was waiting to travel to Colombia to speak with President Alvaro Uribe,' Chavez said a day after he returned from Bogota where he sought to help engineer the long-awaited swap.

QUETTA, Pakistan, Aug 20, 2007 (AFP) - Pakistani troops on Monday in a pre-dawn raid freed 21 people who were kidnapped by militants in southeastern Iran and then whisked over the border, security officials said.

Troops freed the 21 hostages, all Iranians, who were captured on Sunday in Iran's Sistan-Baluchestan province in a town close to the border, killing the leader of the kidnap gang and arresting the others.

Pakistani authorities began handing over the freed hostages at an airbase near here late Monday.

QUETTA, Pakistan, Aug 20, 2007 (AFP) - Pakistani authorities late Monday began handing over 21 freed hostages to Iranian officials after rescuing them from a kidnap gang who whisked them over the border the day before.

'The 21 recovered abductees are being handed over to Iranian officials and they are fulfilling formalities at an airbase near Quetta,' said the head of Pakistan's paramilitary Frontier Corps, Major General Salim Nawaz.

Nawaz told reporters the gang leader Sher Khan had been killed in the dawn raid by Pakistani security forces that freed the hostages.

TEHRAN, Aug 19, 2007 (AFP) - Twelve people who were kidnapped by militants in southeastern Iran and taken into neighbouring Pakistan have been freed by Pakistani police, Iranian police announced on Monday.

A police spokesman said the 12 hostages, who were kidnapped on Sunday on the road between the towns of Chabahar and Iranshahr in Sistan-Baluchestan province were freed in a Pakistani police operation.

TEHRAN, Aug 19, 2007 (AFP) - Armed militants linked to a shadowy Sunni rebel leader kidnapped 12 people in a restive southeastern province of Iran on Sunday and whisked them off to neighbouring Pakistan, police said.

The militants, linked to Abdolmalek Rigi, ambushed the vehicles on a remote road in Sistan-Baluchestan province near the town of Negur, 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the border, and then took them into Pakistan.

TEHRAN, Aug 19, 2007 (AFP) - Armed bandits in southeastern Iran have taken a number of people hostage after stopping their bus with gunfire, Iranian news agencies reported on Sunday.

The official IRNA agency cited a local police chief as saying two people had been abducted, but the semi-official Fars and ISNA agencies said that 30 passengers were kidnapped.

'Around 7:00 am (0330 GMT) this morning, armed bandits blocked the road and took two people hostage,' local police chief Mohammad Javad Asna Ashari told IRNA.

PARIS, Aug 16, 2007 (AFP) - The children of French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt appealed on Thursday to rebels holding their mother to give them solid proof she is still alive after 2,000 days in captivity.

'All we have been asking for the past four years is some proof of life. For us to have real proof, video proof that she is alive,' Betancourt's son Lorenzo Delloye, 19, told reporters in Paris.

BOGOTA, Aug 14, 2007 (AFP) - French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt, who sees her 2,000th day as a hostage Thursday, is famous in France for her ordeal -- but in her home country split by civil conflict she is just one of thousands held by rebels.

There has been no sign of the 45-year-old since a video released in 2003, the year after she was seized near rebel territory while waging an ambitious campaign as a green party presidential candidate, denouncing corruption.

GENEVA, Aug 13, 2007 (AFP) - The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said Monday it had handed over two South Korean women hostages held by the Taliban to a South Korean delegation in Afghanistan.

The ICRC said in a statement that it had played a key role as a neutral intermediary in the women's release and in helping recent talks between the two sides.

'The ICRC is relieved that two hostages have been released and that they can now rejoin their families back home,' said Reto Stocker, head of the agency's delegation in the Afghan capital, Kabul.

LAGOS, Aug 12, 2007 (AFP) - A foreign hostage died shortly after being released at the weekend in oil-rich southern Nigeria, a military officer said Sunday.

'He was abducted by militants. They demanded a ransom but no ransom was paid and a group of community leaders went to release him. He died before he could be taken to hospital for treatment,' Major Omale Ochaguba of the Joint Task Force told AFP.

Five of the man's abductors had also been arrested at the weekend, he added.

The incident happened in or near the Bayelsa state capital Yenagoa.

SEOUL, Aug 12, 2007 (AFP) - Afghanistan's Taliban has decided not to free any of 21 South Korean hostages despite earlier saying two women could go, the Korea's Yonhap news agency reported Sunday citing an insurgents' spokesman.

Yonhap quoted Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi as saying: 'Our leaders have changed their minds and decided not to free two female hostages.'

South Korean officials refused to confirm the report.

BERLIN, Aug 2, 2007 (AFP) - A German hostage in Afghanistan who suffered circulatory failure and was then shot dead by his captors was 'brutally killed', German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Thursday.

'His kidnappers killed him brutally and ended his life in a criminal way,' Steinmeier told AFP during a tour of west Africa.

'This is deeply shocking. This crime must not go unpunished.'

BERLIN, Aug 2, 2007 (AFP) - A German man held hostage in Afghanistan suffered circulatory failure and was then shot dead by his captors last month, according to the results of a post-mortem released on Thursday.

'As a result of the strain of the situation he was in during the kidnapping he suffered a collapse of his circulation,' foreign ministry spokesman Martin Jaeger said.

'This collapse alone did not lead to the death of the hostage. The victim, still alive, was then shot twice after collapsing.

'Once he had died, four more shots were fired at the victim.'

BERLIN, Aug 1, 2007 (AFP) - A video of a German engineer who has been held hostage in Afghanistan for nearly two weeks apparently pleading for his life was recorded several days ago, a report in the German media said on Wednesday.

The video was loaded onto a computer memory stick and analysis of the data revealed it dated from Saturday, the online version of Der Spiegel magazine reported.

The images broadcast by Al-Jazeera on Tuesday show the 62-year-old German, identified as Rudolf B., standing in a rocky clearing with several men pointing guns at him.

GUATEMALA CITY, July 31, 2007 (AFP) - Angry villagers, convinced of a kidnapping ring in their midst, were holding some 15 captives Tuesday, including several visiting teachers and the local mayor in their Guatemalan town.

Indigenous residents of the El Paraiso village in northern Guatemala took their captives Monday following a community radio report warning that the visitors were drawing up a list of children who would be snatched for international adoptions, said Education Minister Maria Acena.

DUBAI, July 31, 2007 (AFP) - A German engineer, held hostage in Afghanistan for nearly two weeks, pleaded for his life in a video broadcast by Al-Jazeera television on Tuesday.

The man, standing in a rocky clearing with several men pointing guns at him, called on Germany and the United States to pull their troops out of Afghanistan so that his his life could be spared, a news reader said.