Naomi Campbell Meets Argentine President

[January 12, 2008]  BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) -- Naomi Campbell called on Argentina's first elected female president Friday, and the pair discussed the release of two women held hostage for years by Colombian guerrillas, the state news agency said.

President Cristina Fernandez had forcefully lobbied alongside Venezuela for a hostage release, and dispatched husband and former president Nestor Kirchner on a humanitarian bid to the Colombian jungle.

That mission failed to bring back the two hostages by New Year's Day, but they were liberated Thursday after being held for six years by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

Campbell recently conducted a celebrity interview with the key hostage mediator and leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. The supermodel's interview as a contributing editor for the British edition of GQ appears in February's edition.

Fernandez and Campbell devoted most of their talk Friday to the hostages, state news agency Telam said.

Campbell was quoted by Telam as effusively praising her host after the midday meeting, calling Argentina's famously fashionable president "accessible" and "very strong."

"It's the first time I've met with a woman president and now I understand why she is president," Campbell was quoted as saying.

Fernandez made greeting celebrities and world leaders a trademark of a novel presidential campaign that helped win her an October election. With a penchant for chic European dresses and coiffeured hair, Fernandez's own fashions are widely watched in Argentina, where she began a four-year term last month.

[Associated Press]

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