Former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt pledged to press Latin American leaders to help get Marxist FARC rebels to disarm, after arriving in Colombia for the first time since she was rescued from guerrillas after a six-year hostage ordeal.

"I am so very happy to be here," she said shortly after arriving at Bogota's El Dorado international airport where she and her mother Yolanda Pulecio were greeted by French ambassador Jean-Michel Marlaud.

Betancourt, 46, who holds dual Colombian and French citizenship, flew to France with her family three weeks after her release on 2 July. On Saturday, she was whisked to a private meeting with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe at the CATAM military airport adjacent to El Dorado.

She said that she would visit Quito, Lima, Santiago, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, Brazil, La Paz and Caracas, in a statement which did not give dates for her visits amid security concerns.

Her goal is to ask presidents to join a renewed drive to get the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the region's largest and longest-fighting rebel force, to lay down their arms, according to the statement obtained by AFP.

Betancourt's visit to Colombia five months after her rescue will be brief since she has often stated she fears for her life here after receiving death threats from FARC rebels, her former captors, a diplomat told AFP.

The online edition of Brazil's O Globo daily said Betancourt would meet with Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva in Sao Paulo on Friday.

Betancourt's visit to Colombia comes 24 hours after tens of thousands marched in France, Spain and across Colombia demanding the release of hostages still being held by the FARC, Latin America's largest and longest-fighting rebel group.

Betancourt headed a demonstration in Madrid alongside Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos.

But her homecoming apparently is fuel for some more mixed feelings in Colombia.

While tens of thousands marched in some 200 Colombian cities on Friday to demand the release of thousands of hostages held by FARC and other rebel and criminal groups in the country, the demonstrations were far less massively supported than on 20 July, when some four million Colombians turned out to voice outrage at the ongoing hostage situation.

The lower turnout on Friday was in part blamed on the ill feelings many Colombians have toward Betancourt for leaving their country so soon after her rescue.

"We feel deeply for her six years of captivity, but she's using the (hostage) issue as a political platform," Oscar Morales, the founder of the "One Million Voices Against FARC" movement founder, told Bogota's El Tiempo newspaper.

Betancourt has said that she does not wish to return to politics in Colombia.

She was rescued along with 14 other hostages on 2 July in a daring operation by army commandos that tricked their FARC rebel captors into thinking they were delivering their captives to the Red Cross.

Betancourt was rescued together with two US contractors and eleven members of the Colombian armed forces.

FARC is still believed to be holding between 350 and 700 hostages, including 28 so-called "political hostages" that the rebels want to swap for about 500 imprisoned guerrillas.

AFP