BOGOTA, Colombia - Former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt embraced her children for the first time in six years Thursday, saying the thought of them helped her stay alive until a daring rescue plucked her and 14 other hostages from the jungle.

"Nirvana, paradise - that must be very similar to what I feel at this moment," Betancourt said, fighting back tears as her son reached over to kiss her. "It was because of them that I kept up my will to get out of that jungle."

On her first morning of freedom, Betancourt also visited the church that holds the remains of her father, who died while she was in captivity. Reporters and camera crews swarmed around her while adoring Colombians applauded as she left the church.

Betancourt raced to the stairway of the French government plane that flew her children to Bogota, throwing her arms around Lorenzo, 19, and Melanie, 22.

"The last time I saw my son, Lorenzo was a little kid and I could carry him around," she said. "I told them, they're going to have to put up with me now, because I'm going to be stuck to them like chewing gum."

Betancourt, 46, was flown to freedom Wednesday in an audacious operation involving military spies who tricked the rebels into handing over their most prized hostages - including three U.S. military contractors - without firing a shot.

Colombia could be "at the end of the end" of its long civil conflict, armed forces chief Freddy Padilla told Caracol Radio on Thursday. "We are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel."

But he warned that, even now, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia "has an enormous capacity for terrorism" and said, "the most difficult moments are yet to come."

In an apparently unrelated release, FARC guerrillas on Thursday freed Norwegian-Colombian hostage Alf Onshuus Nino, a 31-year-old mathematics teacher at the University of the Andes in Bogota, Norway's Foreign Ministry announced. Spokeswoman Kristin Melsom had no details about his release, but said it was unrelated to Wednesday's rescue.

Bjoern Omdal Onshuus, a relative, told Norwegian radio that a ransom had been paid. Norwegian media earlier had reported the FARC was demanding $200,000 for his release.

Many relatives of hostages have opposed rescue attempts, mindful of a botched 2003 operation in which rebels killed 10 hostages, including a former defence minister, when they heard helicopters approach. In Wednesday's operation, there were no such mistakes.

"It was an extraordinary symphony in which everything went perfectly," Betancourt said.

She appeared thin but surprisingly healthy as she strode down the stairs of a military plane and held her mother in a long embrace.

A flight carrying the Americans - Marc Gonsalves, Thomas Howes and Keith Stansell - landed in Texas late Wednesday after being flown there directly. They were to reunite with their families and undergo tests and treatment at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio.

U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield said the Americans were healthy and "very, very happy" but two suffered from the jungle malady leishmaniasis and were "looking forward to modern medical treatment."

President Alvaro Uribe, in a celebratory news conference flanked by the freed Colombian hostages, said he isn't interested in "spilling blood" and that he wants the FARC to know he seeks "a path to peace, total peace."

U.S. President George W. Bush said Thursday that Uribe had called a day earlier "to give me the good news," and said he congratulated the Colombian leader.

"I'm proud of our relationship with Colombia, and I'm proud of my friend," Bush said of Uribe.

Betancourt was abducted in February 2002 while she was campaigning for president. The Americans were captured a year later when their drug surveillance plane went down in rebel-held jungle. Some of the others had been held for a dozen years.

Betancourt, a dual French national who grew up in Paris, had become a cause celebre across Europe. The office of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who had made Betancourt's liberation a priority of state, said Betancourt was expected to arrive in France on Friday.

Betancourt thanked Uribe, against whom she was running when she was kidnapped, and said he "has been a very good president."

However, she said, "I continue to aspire to serve Colombia as president."

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