Bogota  - With tender strokes and tears, the liberated Colombian hostage Ingrid Betancourt was reunited Thursday with her two children, Melanie and Lorenzo, their first contact in more than eight years.

Her children - both young adults who live in France with their father and who have lobbied intensively around the world for their mother's release - arrived at the Catam military base near Bogota Thursday morning, aboard an Airbus A319 belonging to the French Presidency.

Betancourt greeted her children on the plane stairs, in a long- awaited scene full of hugs, kissing and tears.

CNN showed video of Betancourt, a Colombian presidential candidate when she was kidnapped in February 2002, stroking the faces of Melanie and Lorenzo Delloye, who have grown taller than she in the eight-year separation.

As she did when she emerged from the jungle on Wednesday wearing fatigues, Betancourt wore a flower woven into her braid in the reunion scenes captured on board an airplane.

Betancourt, 46, holds dual French-Colombian citizenship and was the most high-profile hostage held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). She was freed in an elaborate ruse carried out by the Colombian military, along with 14 others, including three Americans.

Melanie and Lorenzo Delloye were accompanied by their father, Betancourt's first husband Fabrice Delloye, and by French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner.

According to media reports, Betancourt was planning to travel to France later Thursday, to personally thank French President Nicolas Sarkozy for his efforts to seek her release.

On Wednesday, Colombian troops posing as fellow rebels tricked FARC into transferring 15 hostages - Betancourt, three US contractors and 11 military and police officers - into their custody, allowing them to helicopter the captives to freedom. Not a shot was fired, and two rebels were arrested. (dpa)