Colombia rebels demand troop withdrawal for talks

BOGOTA, Dec 27 (Reuters) Colombia's largest rebel group pressed President Alvaro Uribe to withdraw troops from two southern areas the size of New York City as a condition for holding talks over releasing hostages.

The rebels were responding to President Alvaro Uribe's decision to allow European negotiators to renew efforts to contact the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, over victims held for as long as nine years in the four-decade insurgency.

''We will start believing in the option for a prisoner exchange the day the president orders public forces to withdraw from Florida and Pradera municipalities,'' FARC commander Raul Reyes told Anncol newswire, which carries rebel statements.

''Without this condition, anything the president says is just demagoguery, weakening, tricks and a lack of respect for the families,'' he said yesterday.

The FARC says demilitarising Florida and Pradera in the rural south will give them security for talks. But the government says the area is a strategic corridor for arms and drugs traffic.

The latest exchange gives some hope to the families of victims held by the FARC, which wants to exchange jailed rebel commanders for 62 hostages, including three US contractors captured in 2003 while on a drug eradication mission.

The FARC, established in the 1960s to fight for a socialist state, turns to kidnapping for political leverage and to bolster its revenues from Colombia's huge cocaine trade.

Washington brands the group terrorists.

Aided by millions in US assistance, Uribe has driven the FARC back into the jungles and mountains. But the rebels are still fighting. Hundreds of troops are killed each year and thousands of civilians forced from their homes by conflict.

FARC fighters killed at least 15 soldiers in an ambush over the weekend.

After Colombians re-elected him in May, Uribe reached out to the FARC with an offer to demilitarize the two rural municipalities. But in October, after a Bogota bombing he blamed on the FARC, he ordered troops to hunt down kidnap victims.

Any talks would be the first open contact between Uribe and the Marxist rebels. But the government has demanded an ''act of good faith'' from the rebels and the FARC insists on keeping armed fighters in any demilitarized zone for security.

''The FARC is not going to call a ceasefire during a humanitarian exchange. They are in action even as they send messages about negotiations,'' said Bogota security analyst Carlos Jaramillo.

Ceding territory to the guerrillas is sensitive. Between 1999 and 2002, Uribe's predecessor withdrew troops from an area the size of Switzerland for talks. But negotiations collapsed after the rebels used the space to rearm and regroup.

Reuters SBA VP0410