LA MACHACA, Colombia (AP) -- A top Colombian rebel commander
                  said his guerrilla army has no intention of surrendering its guns even if it
                  reaches a peace accord with the government.

                  The comments came amid reports that three soldiers, a police officer and
                  nine civilians were killed in separate rebel attacks Monday and Tuesday in
                  northwestern Colombia.

                  "The government knows that we're not going to surrender our weapons,"
                  said Joaquin Gomez, one of three subcomandantes representing the
                  Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, in peace talks that
                  have yet to begin.

                  "They are talking with us because we have them, and these same weapons
                  will be a guarantee afterwards that the agreements are carried out," Gomez,
                  the 51-year-old chief of the rebel's southern military bloc, told reporters
                  Monday in this remote southern hamlet.

                  The government has not set any conditions for the talks, though President
                  Andres Pastrana has appealed for a truce, at least through the Christmas and
                  New Year's holiday. The rebels have refused to halt hostilities, however.

                  Accompanied by a dozen bodyguards, Gomez arrived in La Machaca,
                  which is little more than a cluster of huts along a dirt road, driving a green
                  Ford sport utility vehicle.

                  Another rebel spokesman, 33-year-old Fabian Ramirez, came in another
                  vehicle and sported a Che Guevara wristwatch. The reporters, arriving from
                  the other direction, had to first clear a rebel checkpoint.

                  Gomez, a former university lecturer, said Pastrana has not honored his
                  promise to remove all soldiers from a 16,200-square-mile swath of southern
                  Colombia where the peace talks are to take place. He said there will be no
                  peace talks until the pullout, now nearly a month delayed, is complete.

                  Pastrana says the more than 100 soldiers that remain at a military base in
                  nearby San Vicente del Caguan, the largest town in the pullout zone, are
                  unarmed and are there to support government negotiators, a claim rejected
                  by the rebels.

                  The rebel negotiators' next scheduled meeting with Pastrana's peace
                  commissioner is set for Dec. 11.

                  Meanwhile, more than 250 miles away, nine civilians and one police officer
                  were killed in an attack Tuesday by FARC fighters on a police post in the
                  town of San Francisco, said Antioquia state police spokesman Haten
                  Dasuki. He could not provide details on how the civilians died, other than to
                  say that the FARC used car bombs.

                  In the nearby town of Cocorna, three soldiers were killed in an ambush by
                  rebels of the National Liberation Army, or ELN, the country's
                  second-largest guerrilla force, the army said.

                  The soldiers had arrived to help a besieged police post, which a column of
                  about 100 ELN fighters attacked Monday, said deputy police commander
                  Gen. Alfredo Salgado. He said seven police officers were missing and
                  possibly captured.

                  Copyright 1998 The Associated Press.