By Nora Boustany

On Feb. 23, Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, 40, and her chief of staff, Clara Rojas, took the perilous road into the southern war zone of San
Vicente del Caguan and never came back. Leftist guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia stopped their car at a roadblock, seized the pair and
released the driver and two journalists accompanying them.

Within two hours, Betancourt faxed a letter to her ailing father, Gabriel Betancourt, in Bogota, telling him she had been taken captive and pleading with him and other
family members to be strong for her.

According to the Colombian ambassador to the United States, Luis Moreno, 3,000 people are kidnapped each year in Colombia, and though the rebel group,
known as the FARC, is holding five other politicians, the government refuses to exchange guerrillas in government jails for the captives. Betancourt's family members
in Miami are currently collecting thousands of signatures on a petition that urges President Andres Pastrana to negotiate in her behalf.

"We are now sadly becoming numb to seeing people kidnapped in Colombia, and we have to unnumb ourselves," said Justin Loeber, who helped publicize
Betancourt's recent memoir, "Until Death Do Us Part: My Struggle to Reclaim Colombia," published in the United States by HarperCollins.

Last week, another Colombian senator, Martha Catalina Daniels, was killed by the FARC. Consuelo Araujo, a former culture minister, was assassinated in
September. In the concluding paragraph of her book, Betancourt herself wondered: "Will they kill me, too?"

Betancourt's children, Melanie, 16, and Lorenzo, 14, who are staying with their father at an undisclosed location, said they are trying to do everything their mother
always instructed them to do: swim, exercise and focus on school. Her former husband, Fabrice Delloye, a French diplomat, said he is proud of her and full of
admiration for her because she has persisted in her fight "in this extremely dangerous country, where the price of life is nothing."

"We are not losers, we are fighters," he said of his family and former wife in a telephone interview. "What has happened to us is horrific, but we are not alone. There
are 3,000 to 4,000 people who are kidnapped at this point, which means that about 10,000 families are waiting like us for a wife, a cousin, a mother or father. And
then there are thousands who disappear and you don't ever hear back from them."

In her book, Betancourt describes the intimidation and threats to her and her family during her political career, which began with a successful run for Congress and
then for the Senate after a privileged upbringing abroad. The threats prompted her to send her children to stay with their father, her first husband.

On the day Betancourt was abducted, Delloye said, officials in Pastrana's entourage in the town of Florencia had refused to let her group use government helicopters
to reach the former rebel haven. Pastrana and his aides were also headed there -- to rehoist the Colombian flag after the military had reclaimed the southern territory
following the collapse of peace negotiations.

"A democratic process owes protection to all its presidential candidates and he totally failed in this task," Delloye said of Pastrana. The president or his aides could
have asked Betancourt to wait for a couple of hours until his rally was over if they did not want her to share the limelight, and they could have promised her safe
passage after that, Delloye said.

He said the information about the refusal to provide helicopters came from Betancourt's mother, who heard from her daughter by cell phone.

In that conversation, Betancourt conveyed her disappointment with Pastrana, noting that she had supported him at many times in his political career, Delloye said.
"When Pastrana needed me, I stood by him," she said of backing him when he gave guerrillas an ultimatum in January to see peace talks to a successful conclusion or
suffer the consequences.

But she told her mother, "When I need him, he is not there." She said that at least one helicopter had flown into the guerrilla zone behind Pastrana with no passengers
aboard.

The presidential election is May 26; Pastrana, constitutionally prohibited from a second term, leaves office in August.

The government has said it knows where Betancourt is being held. Moreno said Colombia is seeking U.S. support for special police units able to mount rescue
operations.

Melanie Betancourt said by telephone that her mother had always discussed the risk involved in her choices. "Though we talked a lot about it, it is still hard to
believe," she said. "Just thinking about it hurts. You go on with your activities, school, but when I try to go to sleep at night, she comes to my mind. And when I first
open my eyes in the morning, I think of her."

She added: "I want people everywhere to be conscious of what is happening in Colombia. There is a war going on there, it is far away, but it is really happening."

Melanie answered with an emphatic "no" when asked whether her mother's experience will make her think differently about the involvement of women in politics.

"When you have a mother like mine, you cannot be someone who is compliant and is part of a society that just accepts everything," she said. "You have to fight for
what you believe in. That is what she has always done.

"Whatever I end up doing, politics, or whatever, I have to help, to feel I am living for something. That is what she has passed on to me."

                                               © 2002