KHARTOUM (AFP) – A French envoy thanked Sudan's President Omar al-Beshir on Sunday for helping to secure the release of a Red Cross worker held by kidnappers for nearly three months.

"I came on behalf of the French authorities to thank President Beshir and the Sudanese authorities for leading efforts that led to the release of the French ICRC worker," said Andre Parant, an adviser to French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

The kidnappers freed Laurent Maurice, an agronomist for the International Committee of the Red Cross, on Saturday after 89 days in captivity, first in Chad and then in Sudan's volatile Darfur region.

He had been seized by a shadowy group calling itself the Falcons for the Liberation of Africa on November 9, 2009 in Chad, where he was assessing the harvest near the Sudanese border.

Speaking to reporters in Khartoum, Parant said that he had also reminded Beshir of "three other French humanitarian workers who are still being held."

Apart from Maurice, another three other French aid workers were abducted since October in a string of attacks in an area straddling eastern Chad, Sudan's troubled Darfur region and the Central African Republic.

Beshir faces an arrest warrant from the International Penal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.