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Colombia rebel leader rules out peace deal

BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) -- A top commander of Colombia's leading Marxist rebel army has said its guns will not fall silent anytime soon, even if it ultimately seizes power, authorities said on Wednesday.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Latin America's largest and oldest surviving guerrilla group, indefinitely suspended peace talks with the government Tuesday, after accusing the administration of President Andres Pastrana of failing to halt killings by right-wing paramilitary groups targeting leftists and suspected guerrilla sympathizers.

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The move was unexpected by many, and plunged Colombia's peace process into what political analysts are calling its worst crisis since it began in January 1999.

But in a speech last month, Jorge Briceno, the FARC's No. 2 commander and chief military strategist, had already predicted efforts to reach a negotiated settlement of a conflict that has taken 35,000 lives since 1990 would lead nowhere.

"We're not going to agree to peace because it doesn't exist," said Briceno, who is better known by the alias "Mono Jojoy."

"Even if we seize power there isn't going to be any peace, because there will then be war with the gringos and other powers," he said.

Briceno is the right-hand man of Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda, the legendary rebel chieftain who founded the FARC as a pro-Soviet, Marxist force in the mid-1960s.

He made his comments in a radio-telephone address to subordinates during the first week of October. The National Police, which intercepted the address, made taped excerpts of it available to local and foreign media organizations Wednesday.

The timing of the release was clearly meant to show that state security forces were not surprised by Tuesday's suspension of the peace talks. And that point was driven home by National Police chief Gen. Luis Ernesto Gilibert, who told reporters the authorities were fully prepared for an escalation in the FARC's campaign of kidnapping and extortion, and hit-and-run attacks across the rugged Andean nation.

Police intelligence officials said Briceno spoke from somewhere inside the Switzerland-sized safe haven or demilitarized zone Pastrana ceded to the FARC two years ago, in a confidence-building gesture to lure the intransigent rebel army into negotiations.

Pastrana will decide in less than a month whether to extend the land-for-peace deal or seek to retake the 16,000-square-mile (42,000 sq km) zone from entrenched FARC fighters.

"We have to be prepared for a break-up of the demilitarized zone and of the (peace) talks, considering the fact that the FARC will never give up its principles," Briceno said in his speech.

He did not elaborate, but FARC leaders have said they will never lay down their arms or sacrifice their long-term goal of taking power and setting up a socialist-style regime in the world's leading cocaine-producing nation.

Tuesday's breakdown of the peace talks came as guerrilla commanders and government delegates were supposed to outline terms for their first bilateral cease-fire in 13 years.

Until now, however the FARC -- with around 17,000 combatants and control of roughly 40 percent of Colombia -- has ruled out any cease-fire until the government met 80 percent of its demands for radical wealth and land redistribution and an end to free market economic policies.

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