Colombia's biggest rebel group will talk peace with President Alvaro Uribe if he halts U.S.-backed anti-guerrilla operations, a guerrilla leader said, reversing the group's earlier refusal to negotiate.

Raul Reyes, spokesman for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, said it would meet with the government if Uribe withdraws security forces from the southern provinces of Putumayo and Caqueta and suspends "Plan Patriota" or the "Patriot Plan," Uribe's popular anti-rebel campaign.

Having reduced urban crime and sparked economic growth with his tough security policies, Washington-ally Uribe won re-election last month in a 62 percent landslide.

"Reyes is setting tough conditions, which mark a new try at negotiations now that Uribe is re-elected," said German Espejo, an analyst at Bogota thinktank Security & Democracy.

"You can expect more gestures and counter-gestures but Uribe is not likely to decrease military pressure on the FARC," he added. "The combination of military pressure and political posturing could result in the start of peace talks before the end of Uribe's second term in 2010."

In a Thursday interview with the TeleSUR television channel, Reyes said the FARC will not meet with the government outside the country or in any region of Colombia that has not been cleared of soldiers and police.

"It is Alvaro Uribe who will decide whether to continue the war or seek to sit down with the FARC," Reyes said.

A government spokesman said Uribe's position, that he will neither cease anti-guerrilla operations nor demilitarize a large part of the country in order to hold talks, had not changed.

The National Liberation Army, or ELN, Colombia's second biggest guerrilla group, is holding preliminary peace talks with Uribe's government in Cuba.

The FARC and ELN say they are fighting for socialism in a country with deep divisions between rich and poor, but even mainstream leftist politicians say the groups have scant popular support.

THOUSANDS KILLED

Thousands are killed and tens of thousands are forced from their homes every year by Colombia's four-decade-old war, which is fuelled by the country's huge cocaine trade.

The government is asking the FARC to free 62 hostages, including three Americans defence contractors and French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt, in exchange for rebels held in government jails.

Reyes said the FARC wants to negotiate a hostage swap. "But this would require that the government has the true political will, starting with sufficient guarantees, free of any traps or tricks," he added.

The FARC had earlier said there will be no hostage deal with right-winger Uribe, whose father, a wealthy landowner, was killed by the group in the early 1980s.