A Colombian police captain captured by leftist rebels more than seven years ago died in a secret jungle camp last month, local media reported on Wednesday, the day his daughter turned 14.

Julian Ernesto Guevara was among 63 hostages, including French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt and three Americans who President Alvaro Uribe is trying to exchange for Marxist guerrillas held in government jails.

His death from illness was reported by Communist newspaper Voz, which has direct contact with the rebels, but there was no official confirmation.

News of the death touched a nerve in Colombia, where thousands of kidnap victims languish in captivity while their families fretfully try to raise ransom money or otherwise negotiate their freedom.

"God willing this will be the only death among the kidnap victims and it will serve as a step toward an exchange of prisoners," the officer's mother, Emperatriz de Guevara, told reporters, adding that Wednesday was the birthday of her granddaughter Ana Maria.

Guevara was taken by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, in late 1998 during an attack in the southern province of Vaupes in which 16 police were killed and 67 were captured.

The government said it would keep pushing for a prisoner exchange under the condition that rebels who are freed do not return to criminal activity.

But the FARC has said there will be no hostage swap with Uribe, who was elected in 2002 on promises of smashing the insurgency and is expected to win re-election in May.

The FARC is also holding three civilian U.S. Defense Department contractors seized in 2003 along with Betancourt, captured while campaigning for the presidency in 2002.

Thousands die every year in Colombia's four-decade-old war involving the FARC and right-wing paramilitary militias, both of which fund their operations with cocaine smuggling.

In December Uribe accepted a proposal by France, Spain and Switzerland to clear government troops from around a small mountain town in southern Colombia to provide a neutral meeting place, reversing his long-held refusal to withdraw security forces in order to hold hostage swap talks.

Although the plan appeared close to meeting the rebels' earlier demands, the FARC responded by saying it would not negotiate with Uribe, a staunch Washington ally whose father was killed by the rebels in the early 1980s.