MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Uribe willing to talk

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe said yesterday he was willing to hold peace talks with the country's Marxist rebel leaders, a softening of his stance against guerrillas fighting a 42-year-old insurgency.

"If it is necessary to bring peace, or to step toward peace, I am willing to do it," Uribe told reporters a day after the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, called for a conditional ceasefire.

"I have been thinking about this and the truth is my task is to look for options," added Uribe, who won office in 2002 vowing to crush the rebels on the battlefield. Uribe, popular for cutting crime as part of his US-backed crackdown on the FARC, has ordered his administration to talk to the rebels about setting up negotiations aimed at a prisoner swap and an eventual peace deal.

The government is in preliminary negotiations with a smaller rebel group, called the ELN, and has disbanded more than 30,000 rightwing paramilitaries.

Finding terms with the 17,000-strong FARC, which governs wide areas of the Colombian countryside and has grown rich on the country's huge cocaine trade, will be more difficult.

Despite scant popular support, the FARC says it is fighting to close the wide gap between the poor and the rich in this Andean country.

"The possibility of a prisoner exchange or peace agreement is still very slim," said political commentator Ricardo Avila. "What we are seeing is a tug of war in which each side tries to convince the public that they want peace."

Thousands are cut down in the crossfire of the conflict every year while tens of thousands are forced from their homes into shantytowns ringing Colombia's cities.

Uribe, who was re-elected in August, said any talks with the FARC would culminate in a constitutional convention, which would include former rebels and paramilitaries, to codify a possible peace accord.

Uribe won office by criticizing past peace efforts as too lenient toward the rebels, and has always insisted on the government controlling the national territory.