BOGOTA, Colombia -- Colombia freed Ingrid Betancourt and three U.S. military contractors from leftist guerrillas on Wednesday after military spies tricked rebels into giving them up without a single injury, the defense minister said.

Eleven Colombian soldiers and police also were freed as their guerrilla captors gave up without a fight, Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said.

In Paris, the son of the former French-Colombian presidential candidate, Lorenzo Delloye-Betancourt, called her release after six years of captivity, "if true, the most beautiful news of my life." He said he would fly to Colombia "very soon" for a reunion.

The Americans -- Marc Gonsalves, Thomas Howes and Keith Stansell -- were being flown to the United States from a military base in central Colombia, Santos said.

Ingrid Betancourt says she still aspires "to serve Colombia as president."

Betancourt says she believes President Alvaro Uribe's 2006 re-election was "very good for Colombia." She says she saw from her six-year jungle captivity that the military buildup he promoted had great effect in debilitating her rebel captors. Betancourt was running against Uribe in 2002 when the rebels kidnapped her.

She told a news conference after her rescue Wednesday that Uribe "has been a very good president" but that "I continue to aspire to serve Colombia as president."

For now, she said, "I'm just one more soldier."

BAGHDAD -- Iraq's foreign minister said Wednesday his government and the U.S. have almost finished negotiating a new security pact that could give Iraqis a role in planning and executing joint military operations.

Both sides hope to wrap up the talks this month in time for Iraq's factious parliament to approve the deal to keep U.S. troops here after the U.N. mandate expires at the end of the year.

Less than three weeks ago, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said negotiations were deadlocked. But Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Wednesday after his recent visit to Washington that the U.S. "showed recently a great deal of flexibility on many of the thorny issues."

Those issues include the authority to carry out military operations in Iraq and arrest the country's citizens, legal immunity for private contractors and U.S. soldiers and control of Iraqi air space.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- The U.S. pressed fellow U.N. Security Council members Wednesday to impose sanctions to push for change in Zimbabwe, where leaders cannot agree whether to even talk about how to resolve their crisis amid fears of worsening political violence.

A draft resolution Washington wants the council to consider proposes freezing the financial assets of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and 11 of his officials and banning them from traveling outside the country.

The text, obtained by The Associated Press, also demands that Mugabe's regime immediately begin negotiations on forming a unity government with the opposition, although Zimbabwe's top opposition leader ruled out talks under current conditions.

The U.S., among Mugabe's sharpest international critics, was president of the Security Council last month. Last week, the council passed a nonbinding resolution condemning violence against Zimbabwe's political opposition after South Africa, China and Russia opposed taking further action.

BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Hezbollah's leader on Wednesday confirmed for the first time that his group will hand over two captured Israeli soldiers and information on a missing Israeli airman in exchange for five Lebanese prisoners in Israel.

Israeli officials believe the two soldiers are dead, but Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said he had not given Israel any indication of their fate. He called reports that they are dead "speculation ... not based on anything tangible."

On Sunday, the day Israel's Cabinet approved the swap, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he believes Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, snatched in a July 2006 cross-border raid that sparked a war between Israel and Hezbollah, are dead.

Hezbollah has never confirmed that, and the Red Cross has not been allowed access.

Speaking to a Beirut news conference by video link, Nasrallah said the U.N.-brokered exchange would take place in mid-July.

All the Lebanese prisoners slated to be freed by Israel are alive. The longest-held prisoner, Samir Kantar, was serving multiple life terms for infiltrating northern Israel in 1979 and killing three Israelis -- a man, his 4-year-old daughter and a police officer.

BEIJING -- China's Communist Party boss in Tibet delivered a fresh attack on the Dalai Lama Wednesday, even as envoys of the region's exiled leader met with Chinese officials for more talks toward easing tensions following anti-government riots.

The official Tibet Daily quoted hard-liner Zhang Qingli as saying that supporters of the Dalai Lama were behind the violence that began with deadly rioting in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa March 14 and quickly spread to sections of Tibet in western China.

"The March 14 incident was a seriously violent criminal incident by the Dalai clique. The organized and orchestrated incident was created by Tibetan separatists after long-term preparation, with the support and instigation of Western hostile forces," Zhang was quoted as saying.

He said the violence was timed for the run-up to next month's Summer Olympics in Beijing.

NEW YORK -- Iran's top diplomat predicted Wednesday that the United States and Israel would not risk the "craziness" of attacking his country and possibly provoking a wider Middle East war or driving oil prices into uncharted heights.

Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said in an interview with The Associated Press that he does not believe a military strike is looming while the U.S. economy is suffering and it is bogged down in a seven-year-old campaign in Afghanistan and more than five years in Iraq.

His remarks come amid mounting speculation that Israel may be considering a unilateral strike on Iran's nuclear facilities -- a contingency that could upend already volatile oil markets.

"We do not foresee such a possibility at the moment. The Israeli government is facing a political breakdown within itself and within the region, so we do not foresee such a possibility for that regime to resort to such craziness," Mottaki said through his translator. "The United States, too, is not in a position where it can engage in, take another risk in the region.

"Of course, there are people in the United States who are interested in that. But we think that the rational thinkers in the United States will prevent from that action being taken, and will prevent the imposition of another adventuresome act that would put pressure on the American taxpayers."