He knows what they want. It's been the same for the past 10 years. So,
                  Conrrado lets out a faint smirk, clears his throat, and begins to sing.

                  Conrrado is not only a peace negotiator with Colombia's largest rebel army, he is
                  also their top recording artist -- whose songs about trials and tribulations of the
                  Western Hemisphere's longest-running war have helped inspire and even recruit
                  guerrilla soldiers.

                  "I prefer music to war, parties to bombs and the rattle of machine-guns,"
                  Conrrado told Reuters. "Peace is my deepest longing. I see it coming closer. I
                  believe we must achieve it so that future generations are not enslaved."

                  The mustachioed officer of the 17,000 member Revolutionary Armed Forces of
                  Colombia (FARC) Conrrado says he dedicates most of his lyrics to peace. That
                  word is often echoed in this rugged Andean nation of 40 million people, where a
                  37-year-old war pitting leftist rebels against the army and outlawed, right-wing
                  paramilitaries has claimed 40,000 lives in the past decade alone.

                  Conrrado's music is banned by the government, which is trying to negotiate
                  peace but sees the FARC as insurgents.

                  But, luckily for him, the FARC controls some 40 percent of Colombia and
                  broadcasts his repertoire of 300 songs over a chain of shortwave radio stations
                  stretching across the nation's war-torn countryside. Conrrado has recorded
                  seven CDs with the FARC, who have in turn passed out thousands of copies
                  free-of charge to guerrilla supporters.

                  Songwriter before soldier

                  Although he carries a Russian-designed AK47 assault rifle and has lived in
                  Colombia's rugged jungles over the past two decades, Conrrado says he is first
                  and foremost a songwriter who has played guitar since his childhood.

                  He says he joined the guerrilla movement as a young man after gunmen shot and
                  killed a doctor who treated impoverished citizens in his mountainous homeland of
                  northeastern Colombia. The doctor's name -- which he adopted upon joining the
                  FARC -- was Julian Conrrado.

                  "The reality of my country has inspired me to fight as a guerrilla and compose as
                  an artist. My songs are a reflection of reality, and this is what the people like,"
                  Conrrado said.

                  Now nestled in the FARC's neutral zone of Los Pozos, Conrrado is more open to
                  the public and more active in the FARC's talks with the government. President
                  Andres Pastrana granted the FARC an area of cattle pasture and jungle the size of
                  Switzerland more than two years ago to start peace talks.

                  But Conrrado hasn't lost his zest for poking fun at Colombia's army.

                  In one song he reminds troops not to fire at rebels, crooning that they too are
                  children of Colombia. He dedicated another tune to the former army chief, Gen.
                  Jose Manuel Bonett, who narrowly escaped a lethal bomb attack near Colombia's
                  Caribbean coast -- and, the song goes, defecated on himself in the process.

                  "Walking around looking for a fight, see what happened? When the bomb
                  exploded, it was indeed diarrhea. They say his teeth chattered and his ears
                  pointed up, and then he fell trembling," goes the popular Conrrado ditty.

                  Like all of his songs, this one is cast in Vallenato style -- a hugely popular breed
                  of Colombian folk music, backed by a bouncing guitar and accordion melody.

                  Packing the house

                  Last July, at the launch of the guerrilla group's still-illegal political party,
                  Conrrado played for 3,000 soldiers, who danced for hours in what turned out to
                  be one of the biggest assemblies of rebel troops in Colombian history.

                  Although one foot is firmly planted on the stage, Conrrado makes clear the other
                  will remain on the soap-box, to remind the people, he says, of why the FARC is
                  at war.

                  "A man's thoughts are a reflection of his objective reality, which in my case was
                  a city of starving people, people who were living in misery," he said.

                  Conrrado, alongside the Marxist-inspired FARC, is pressing for an economic
                  revolution that would aid the one in every two Colombians who lives in abject
                  poverty. Colombia's unemployment is officially pegged at nearly 20 percent of
                  the working population -- but unofficial counts climb much higher.

                  Although Conrrado and the FARC are in talks to negotiate peace, many analysts
                  say their demands for Marxist-style revolution are too steep for Colombia's
                  democratic president Andres Pastrana -- or his successors -- to ever accept.

                  Colombia's armed forces, and the illegal paramilitaries, see the FARC differently,
                  and accuse them of human rights abuses and massive involvement in the cocaine
                  trade.

                  Conrrado says he is hopeful that the FARC may soon compromise and lay down
                  their weapons, and that Colombia's people will learn to live in the kind of peace
                  his songs so vividly depict.

                  "We will have to sacrifice," Conrrado said. "The path of dialogue is better than
                  that of bullets."

                     Copyright 2001 Reuters.