BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) -- A prosecution witness in the case of three
                 suspected Irish Republican Army members charged with training Marxist
                 rebels in Colombia has disappeared, the prosecutor's office said on Tuesday.

                 The anonymous witness, a former municipal employee, told prosecutors he saw
                 Martin McCauley, one of the three suspects, in August 1998 in rural southern
                 Colombia in the company of rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
                 -- known by its Spanish acronym FARC.

                 McCauley, Niall Terence Connolly and James Monaghan, who British and
                 Colombian police say are members of the mainstream IRA, were arrested on Aug.
                 11 on charges of training guerrillas to make bombs and other weapons over five
                 weeks in a demilitarized enclave under FARC control.

                 The witness said he recognized McCauley after the suspect's picture was published
                 in a local newspaper following McCauley's arrest.

                 The Colombian government temporarily ceded the enclave in November of 1998 to
                 th e 17,000-member FARC, Latin America's oldest rebel army, as a safe base to
                 hold peace talks.

                 The talks aim at ending Colombia's 37-year-old war, which has killed 40,000
                 mostly civilians in the last decade.

                 The men, who have denied IRA links and accused foreign intelligence agencies of
                 inventing the charges to derail peace efforts in Northern Ireland, are being held in a
                 Bogota jail. Colombia's public prosecutor's office has six months to prepare its case
                 against the three.

                 According to the investigation's sealed case file, which was obtained by Reuters,
                 the witness told prosecutors during his Aug. 17 testimony that a FARC commander
                 told him the rebels were "receiving training by foreigners specialized in war."

                 The witness, whose identity has been withheld, told the prosecutor's office last
                 week that he wanted to withdraw from a witness protection program -- which
                 would usually provide bodyguards and the chance of assuming a new name. He has
                 not been heard of since.

                 Forensic tests carried out by the U.S. Embassy in Colombia on the men showed
                 they came in contact with four types of explosives used to fabricate detonators.

                 The arrests of the men came at a sensitive time in peace talks in Northern Ireland
                 and embarrassed the Colombian government, which is trying to show its fragile
                 peace talks with the FARC are making headway.

                 Colombia's armed forces, which are barred from entering the zone, allege the
                 FARC uses the demilitarized zone as a massive prison for kidnap victims and as a
                 base to recruit and train its fighters.

                    Copyright 2001 Reuters.