The government said Monday it would consider a demand from Colombia's main rebel group to hold face-to-face talks over swapping jailed insurgents for dozens of hostages, including three U.S. military contractors.

President Alvaro Uribe's administration had wanted to conduct the negotiations by messages over the Internet. Resolving the differences could lead to the first negotiations between the hard-line government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, since peace talks failed more than two years ago.

FARC spokesman Raul Reyes told a local TV station the rebels are willing to negotiate personally with government Peace Commissioner Luis Carlos Restrepo in a safe haven.

"Our spokesmen should sit down with the representatives of the government face-to-face ... and for that a zone, which we call a security zone and which others call a demilitarized zone, is required," Reyes said in the interview broadcast Sunday night by Noticias Uno.

Uribe has previously ruled out providing a safe haven because the FARC used a demilitarized zone, provided by then-President Andres Pastrana during the failed talks, to launch attacks, stash hostages and traffic in drugs.

Interior Minister Sabas Pretelt said Monday the government would consider face-to-face talks.

"We will have to see how it would be carried out, and where," Pretelt told local radio.

The comments gave hope to relatives of those being held hostage by the FARC in the remote jungles and mountains of this South American country.

"This is the biggest advance we have seen since Ingrid was kidnapped," said Juan Carlos Lecompte, wife of politician Ingrid Betancourt, who was a candidate for president when she was kidnapped in 2002 while campaigning in southern Colombia.

The rebels also hold about 20 other Colombian politicians, dozens of government soldiers and the three Americans. Unlike the thousands of ordinary Colombians whom the rebels kidnap for ransom, the FARC says these hostages will be freed only when the government releases rebels in Colombian jails.

The three Americans - Marc Gonsalves, Keith Stansell and Thomas Howes - were seized in February 2003 after their single-engine U.S. State Department plane crash-landed in a southern FARC stronghold.

The government and rebels remain far apart on conditions for a prisoner exchange.

Uribe's administration says any rebels it frees cannot rejoin the guerrillas and instead must be exiled from Colombia or enter a government program to reincorporate them into civil society. The rebels say released rebels should be allowed to return to the FARC's ranks.

The government also has said that only rebels accused of rebellion, and not more serious crimes, would be let go. The FARC likely wants two captured rebel commanders to be included in any swap, but they are implicated in bloody attacks and kidnappings.

The 16,000-strong FARC, along with a smaller rebel group, has battled the Colombian government for 40 years. Three years of peace talks between the FARC and the Pastrana administration collapsed in February 2002 after the rebels hijacked an airliner and kidnapped a senator who was aboard.