Ms Clara Rojas and former legislator Consuelo Gonzalez de Perdomo landed in Caracas aboard a private jet in Caracas just hours after Venezuelan helicopters plucked them earlier from a secret site deep in the Colombian jungle.

Mrs Gonzalez's daughters Patricia and Maria Fernanda held a tearful reunion with their mother on the tarmac, when the former Colombian lawmaker captured in 2001 met her two-year-old granddaughter for the first time.

'This is like living again,' she said, holding the baby in her arms.

'Sometimes I think it's a dream.' Ms Rojas, who gave birth to a boy three years ago after a relationship with one of her captors, kissed her mother Clara Gonzalez, 76.

Her son, Emmanuel, is now said to be in care in Bogota, after the rebels took him from his mother when he was just months old and handed him over in unclear circumstances to villagers.

Ms Rojas was the campaign manager for Franco-Colombian politician Ms Ingrid Betancourt when they were both seized by the Revolutionary Armed Forces in February 2002.

But she said on Thursday she had had no news about Ms Betancourt, who had been standing for the country's president, and her whereabouts for several years.

'About Ingrid, for the past three years I've had no idea,' Ms Rojas told Colombia's Caracol radio network, adding they had been split up by the rebels for security reasons.

Eight other hostages are alive
Ms Rojas also said the rebels delivered proof to Venezuelan authorities that eight other high-profile hostages are alive.

'We were a group of ten people, they were authorised to give proof that they were alive and the guerrilla commanders delivered it this morning' to the Venezuelan representative, Ms Rojas told Caracol.

The group included three legislators, a governor, and army and police officers.

The FARC is one of the world's longest running insurgencies, and the rebels are believed to hold around 750 hostages.

The guerrillas agreed to release the two women to the neighbouring Venezuela under the auspices of the International Committee of the Red Cross, but not directly to their foes in the Colombian government of conservative President Alvaro Uribe.

Ms Rojas, 44, and Mrs Gonzalez, 57, were earlier picked up from the jungle by Venezuelan helicopters, which brought them to the western Venezuelan town of Santo Domingo to switch to a Falcon executive jet for the flight to Caracas.

'Welcome to Life'
'You are completely free now,' Mr Chavez said he had told Ms Rojas and Mrs Gonzalez soon after the Venezuelan helicopters picked them up.

'I told both of them: Welcome to Life.' The former hostages traveled to Caracas with Venzuelan Interior Minister Ramon Rodriguez Chacin, leftist Colombian Senator Piedad Cordoba, and Cuba's ambassador to Venezuela German Sanchez.

The women were part of a group of more than 40 hostages - including Ms Betancourt and three US nationals - that the FARC wants to exchange for 500 rebels jailed by the Colombian government.

In December, the FARC offered to release Mrs Gonzalez, Ms Rojas and her son to Mr Chavez, who had been trying to mediate the hostage swap between Bogota and the rebels.

But the operation collapsed when the FARC failed to inform Mr Chavez of the handover location and Mr Uribe then made the bombshell revelation that the boy was actually at a state-run orphanage in Bogota.

DNA tests conducted in Colombia and Spain using samples from Ms Rojas's mother and brother have confirmed the child is indeed her son. -- AFP