Colombia deadlocked over rebel hostage swap talks

BOGOTA, July 8 (Reuters) Colombian President Alvaro Uribe dug in his heels over the weekend against Marxist guerrilla demands that he remove troops from a rural area to clear the way for prisoner swap talks.

Despite calls from families of rebel hostages urging him to agree to demilitarize a New York City-sized zone in the west of the country, Uribe signaled he will stick with the hard-line security stance that got him elected.

The deadlock is bad news for kidnap victims such as French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt, who was captured by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, during her 2002 presidential campaign.

''Safe-haven zones in Colombia have been used by the terrorists to strengthen their efforts to take power,'' said Uribe, adding that he ''rejects'' the idea.

Uribe first won office in 2002 by criticizing peace initiatives in which the guerrillas were given limited territorial control.

Previous President Andres Pastrana ceded a Switzerland-sized area to the rebels to facilitate peace talks that disintegrated after the FARC used the safe area to consolidate their cocaine- and kidnapping-funded revolution.

''Uribe built his public persona on criticizing Pastrana for granting a safe haven to the FARC, so he can't be seen falling into the same trap,'' said political commentator Ricardo Avila.

The president's standing overseas has been hurt by a scandal in which some of his closest congressional allies and his former state security chief have been charged with colluding with right-wing paramilitary death squads.

The scandal could eventually pressure Uribe into granting a safe zone as a way of showing a balanced approach to ending Colombia's four-decade-old guerrilla war.

''Unless international pressure grows to the point where Uribe is forced to give in, I expect him to remain stubborn in his refusal to create a demilitarized zone and this will indefinitely postpone any hostage swap talks,'' Avila said.

Uribe and the FARC say they would like to swap about 60 high-profile rebel hostages, including three American defense contractors captured during a 2003 anti-drug mission, for guerrillas held in government jails.

Advocates of a safe zone say it would be much smaller than the one established under Pastrana and would not offer a strategic foothold to the guerrillas.

The debate was energized by the June killings of 11 provincial lawmakers held for more than five years by the FARC. The deaths sparked nationwide protests last week.

Uribe, whose father was killed in a botched FARC kidnapping in the 1980s, was reelected last year based on the economic upturn brought by his US-backed security crackdown.

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