(Adds reaction from Betancourt's mother) By Patrick Markey BOGOTA, June 4 (Reuters) - Colombian President Alvaro Uribe freed a jailed guerrilla leader on Monday to try to broker peace talks and negotiate the release of rebel-held hostages, including a French-Colombian politician and three Americans. Uribe said French President Nicolas Sarkozy asked him to seek an accord by freeing Rodrigo Granda, a top guerrilla known as the "foreign minister" of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the country's largest rebel group. "Today after midday, Rodrigo Granda was freed from prison," Uribe said in a late-night television address. "The government has given him all the guarantees so he can act as a facilitator to work for peace." The measure bolsters hopes for a deal to free hostages held for years in Latin America's oldest guerrilla war, including dual French-Colombian citizen Ingrid Betancourt and three U.S. Defense Department contract workers who were snatched in 2003. France, Spain and Switzerland have been involved in seeking negotiations with the guerrillas, who have held hundreds of hostages for as long as eight years. Efforts to broker an accord have been stalled over a rebel demand Uribe pull troops back from a rural area the size of New York City before talks. Granda will be given conditional release under the supervision of Colombia's peace commissioner, Deputy Justice Minister Guillermo Reyes told Reuters. He was arrested in December 2004 after he was snatched by police agents in Caracas in an operation that fueled tensions between Venezuela and Colombia. Local television showed images of Granda dressed in a light shirt and slacks carrying a rucksack as he was escorted out of La Dorada prison in Caldas province west of Bogota. He was flown by helicopter to Bogota, where he was taken into a Catholic Church building. Granda's release is part of Uribe's plans to free some 180 jailed rebels in a unilateral gesture he hopes will prompt FARC guerrillas to release hostages. The FARC on Sunday rejected Uribe's plan and reiterated a demand he cede a demilitarized zone as a condition for talks. Alfredo Rangel at Bogota think tank Security and Democracy, said, "This came about after a FARC decision to authorize Granda to act as a spokesman. ... This shows the FARC is disposed to advance toward a humanitarian accord." Betancourt is one of the highest profile kidnap victims in Colombia. She was kidnapped in 2002 campaigning for the presidency along with her assistant Clara Rojas, who gave birth to a son in captivity. The three U.S. contract workers -- Marc Gonsalves, Thomas Howes and Keith Stansell -- were captured when their aircraft went down in the jungles while on a drug eradication mission. "This is something positive and I want to believe in it," Betancourt's mother Yolanda Pulecio told Reuters. "When I saw that Granda was in the helicopter, I was happy." Violence has dropped sharply under Uribe's U.S.-financed campaign to end the fighting. He has succeeded in pushing rebels back into the jungles and mostly disarmed illegal paramilitaries who once fought them in a dirty war fueled by the country's cocaine trade. (Additional reporting by Herbert Villarraga in Bogota)
