Bogota: Ex-hostage Clara Rojas yesterday hugged and kissed her three-year-old son Emmanuel, the first meeting with the child since leftist guerrillas holding her in the Colombian jungle spirited the boy away at the age of eight months.

Rojas met the boy Sunday at a state-run orphanage along with her mother, Clara Gonzalez, and her brother. Guerrillas with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) captured Rojas -- campaign manager for French-Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, also kidnapped -- February 2002.

She was released with another hostage on Thursday. Emmanuel was born in April 2004,the fruit of an apparently consensual liaison between Rojas, now 44,and a guerrilla fighter.

"It was a very emotional moment," a government official who spoke on condition of anonymity told AFP, describing the meeting. "She could not hold back her tears, and the boy was very warm towards his new family," the official added.

Outside, police had blocked off the area as hundreds of locals flocked to the orphanage in an attempt to witness the event. Rojas, who discovered that Emmanuel was alive in a New Year's eve radio broadcast, flew into Bogota's military airport with her family from Caracas for the meeting.

"Today I was told that he sent me a little something," Rojas said ahead of the meeting. On the tarmac Rojas was greeted by Colombian government officials, including the director of the Colombian Family Welfare Institute (ICBF), which has been caring for the boy for months, and Luis Carlos Restrepo, President Alvaro Uribe's peace commissioner.

Source : PTI