"We have tried everything," he said in an interview on Europe 1 radio. "We've got the whole of Latin America moving and they're now involved."
PARIS (Reuters) - France is still awaiting a response from Colombian FARC guerrillas about its mission to aid hostage Ingrid Betancourt, a French-Colombian politician held since 2002, Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said on Friday.
"We have tried everything," he said in an interview on Europe 1 radio. "We've got the whole of Latin America moving and they're now involved."
"We're waiting, we're in place," he said.
A French medical team arrived in Colombia on Thursday, dispatched by President Nicolas Sarkozy in a bid to treat Betancourt, who is believed to be seriously ill after more than six years of captivity in the rebels' jungle stronghold.
!ADVERTISEMENT!"We're trying, trying, trying and there's no other solution," Kouchner said.
Sarkozy has made the release of Betancourt, a former Colombian presidential candidate, a foreign policy priority for his government, but so far few details have been revealed about the mission to attempt to treat her in a rebel camp hidden deep in the jungle.
The French aircraft was waiting on the tarmac at Bogota's Catam military air base, fuelled and ready to fly to anywhere it was required inside Colombia, officials said.
Captives freed in recent months by the rebels in deals brokered by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez say Betancourt is very ill with hepatitis. Images from a rebel video released last year showed her pale and gaunt in a hidden jungle camp.
A mother of two adult children who was educated in France, Betancourt has been chained to a tree after several attempts to escape her captors, freed hostages say.
(Reporting by James Mackenzie; Editing by Catherine Evans)
