REBELS have released a video showing 12 Colombian politicians alive after four years in captivity, and said Franco-Colombian former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt was being treated well.

"Rufino Varela here,'' a legislator from the city of Cali said in the video.

"Today is August 8, 2006. We have been detained for 52 months and our health is deteriorating.''

In another video, a rebel leader said Ms Betancourt was well and was enjoying the same food and treatment as the rebels.

Ms Betancourt was a senator and presidential candidate in 2002, when she was kidnapped by the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

The deputies appearing in the video asked President Alvaro Uribe to accept FARC's demand to demilitarise two municipalities in the south to allow a prisoner swap.

The guerrilla group has proposed that the Government release 500 jailed rebels in exchange for 58 kidnap victims.

Ms Betancourt's plight has become an international cause celebre, especially in Europe and among fellow members of the Green Party, which endorsed her during her presidential campaign.

The FARC, Colombia's oldest and largest rebel group, is holding hundreds of other kidnap victims.