An army captain, who was presumed dead after he disappeared more than three years ago, was found alive chained to a tree after skirmishes with leftist rebels Thursday, the military said.

Capt. Leonardo Moore, who disappeared May 24, 2003, while driving from Bogota to the southern city of Cali, said at a news conference that he remembers little about his kidnapping because he was drugged. He said he woke up two days later to find he was being held by the National Liberation Army, or ELN, Colombia's second-largest guerrilla insurgency.

``It's like being reborn,'' said Moore, holding the metal shackles with which he was bound. Fearing he would die in captivity, Moore said he carved his name and rank onto his arm with a stick so ``I wouldn't be buried without a name.''

``We never received any information about a possible kidnapping, to the point that legally he was considered disappeared and presumed dead,'' Gen. Freddy Padilla, chairman of Colombia's Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a statement.

Gen. Mario Montoya, head of the army, said a military operation to secure Moore's release was mounted near the town of El Dovio, 155 miles west of Bogota, after he received intelligence that the ELN was preparing to move a hostage in the area.

President Alvaro Uribe last year gave the military authority to draw up rescue plans for the more than 3,000 people believed to be held by leftist rebels and other armed groups.

Relatives of the hostages say such a strategy is tantamount to a death sentences for their loved ones because the rebels are under orders to kill their prisoners in case of an assault.

The ELN and the government have made slow progress in several rounds of exploratory peace talks held in Havana, the last in October.

No date has been scheduled for the next round of talks, with both sides instead concentrating on concrete gestures - like Wednesday's prisoner release - to invigorate the talks, Ackerman said.

The ELN also is working with local communities to remove thousands of land mines that it planted. The mines are blamed for killing four people this year in Narino.

The ELN was founded in the 1960s by Roman Catholic seminary students inspired by Fidel Castro's communist revolution in Cuba. Its numbers have dwindled in recent years to fewer than 2,000 fighters as a result of an aggressive, U.S.-backed military campaign by Uribe.