LA MACHACA Colombia AP Colombian rebels have no intention of giving up their weapons if a peace accord is reached with President Andres Pastrana's government a top guerrilla negotiator says. ``The government knows that we're not going to surrender our weapons'' said Joaquin Gomez one of three subcomandanders representing the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia or FARC in a peace dialogue that has yet to begin. ``They are talking with us because we have them and these same weapons will be a guarantee afterwards that the agreements are carried out'' Gomez 51-year-old chief of the FARC's southern military bloc told foreign correspondents on Monday in this remote southern hamlet. The government has not set any conditions for the talks though Pastrana has appealed for a truce at least through the Christmas and New Year's holiday. The rebels have refused to halt hostilities however and three soldiers and one police officer were killed in separate rebel attacks in northwestern Colombia authorities said. Accompanied by a dozen bodyguards Gomez arrived in La Machaca which is little more than a cluster of huts along a dirt road driving a green Ford sport utility vehicle. His fellow spokesman 33-year-old Fabian Ramirez came in another vehicle and sported a Che Guevara wristwatch. The reporters arriving from the other direction had to first clear a rebel checkpoint. Gomez said the FARC still does not consider that Pastrana has honored his promise to remove all soldiers from a 42000-square-kilometer 16200-square-mile swath of southern Colombia including La Machaca where the peace talks are to take place. Until the pullout is complete the former university lecturer added there will be no talks. Pastrana says the more than 100 soldiers that remain at a military base in nearby San Vicente del Caguan the largest town in the pullout zone are unarmed and are there to support government negotiators. But the FARC insists the soldiers be removed and Ramirez over the weekend accused the army of plotting to assassinate the group's 70-year-old commander Manuel Marulanda who founded the hemisphere's oldest and largest rebel band 34 years ago. Nearly a month has passed since the government pullout was supposed to be complete and Gomez said ``the balance is not encouraging because they have not withdrawn.'' The rebel negotiators' next scheduled meeting with Pastrana's peace commissioner is set for Dec. 11. Meanwhile more than 400 kilometers 250 miles away three soldiers were killed in an ambush by rebels of the National Liberation Army or ELN the country's second-largest guerrilla force the army said. The soldiers had arrived to help a besieged police post in Cocorna Antioquia state which a column of about 100 ELN fighters attacked Monday evening said deputy police commander Gen. Alfredo Salgado. He said two police officers were wounded and seven missing and possibly captured. In a separate action FARC fighters attacked a police post early Tuesday in San Francisco a town near Cocorna 180 kilometers 110 miles northwest of Bogota killing one police officer and wounding six Salgado said. He said communications were lost with the town. APW19981201.0025.txt.body.html APW19981201.1526.txt.body.html