Latin America's oldest and strongest guerrilla group on Monday set conditions for proposed peace talks with President Alvaro Uribe's hard-line government, calling for "clear guarantees" from the government on a prisoner swap.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, says talks would have to follow the exchange of hundreds of rebel prisoners for some 62 politicians, soldiers, police and three U.S. military contractors, some held for as long as a decade.

"Once they are all freed, the order of the day will be to seek agreement to overcome the social and armed conflict that has been plaguing the country," says the FARC statement, which was dated Oct. 1 and published on the group's Web site.

The FARC has been fighting the government for 42 years and such talks would be the first since negotiations collapsed in February 2002, when the government dissolved a Switzerland-sized safe haven it had ceded to the rebels in the country's south in 1999.

President Uribe said in a radio interview Monday that he was open to both the prisoner exchange and peace talks.

However, both his defense minister and military chief recently rejected the FARC's demand that they withdraw troops from the proposed "encounter zone" as a condition for a prisoner exchange.

They also have said that FARC negotiators would need to enter the zone unarmed, a condition the FARC rejects.

FARC called for "clear guarantees" from the government on a prisoner swap, including a 45-day demilitarization of a 310-square-mile area in the southwestern state of Valle del Cauca, where the transfer would take place.

The guerrilla proposal also includes a cease-fire but demands a safe haven even larger than the one that the previous government of President Andres Pastrana dissolved in 2002. It would encompass the two entire southern states of Caqueta and Putumayo, where fighting between the FARC and government is most intense.

The FARC also said the United States and Europe would need to remove it from their lists of international terrorist organizations so various countries could assume the roles of mediators.

The possibility of a prisoner exchange was renewed after Uribe began a second consecutive term in August.

Uribe has boosted the Colombian military's strength and effectiveness with the help of U.S. training and more than $3 billion in aid.

Under Uribe, the murder rate is down in urban Colombia and the government says it has more than halved the kidnapping rate.

In an interview published over the weekend, FARC spokesman Raul Reyes said the three U.S. military contractors captured in 2003 when their plane went down in rebel-controlled territory remain alive. However he offered no proof of life for Keith Stansell, Marc Gonsalves and Tom Howes.