By JUAN FORERO
 
BOGOTÁ, Colombia, Feb. 11 - A new wave of leftist rebel attacks, along with mounting international criticism of government efforts to disarm right-wing death squads, have dealt sudden and serious setbacks to President Álvaro Uribe even as he has been touting his success in bringing order to this conflict-riven country.

The deaths of 45 soldiers in nine days to rebel attacks has raised concerns that the guerrillas have ended a two-year retreat and embarked on an offensive to undermine the government's pacification efforts. Rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, killed 24 troops in northern Colombia on Wednesday. Just days before, in two ambushes in the south, another 31 troops were killed.

An intensive military campaign to quash the rebellion has been one branch of Mr. Uribe's widely publicized strategy to improve conditions in Colombia. The other has focused on negotiations and legislation to disarm the paramilitary death squads that have worked hand in hand with rogue military units in fighting the rebels.

Yet a yearlong, 18,000-troop military offensive in southern Colombia has taken the lives of as many as 1,000 soldiers, according to high-ranking military officials. The recent attacks by FARC, which has fought the government for 41 years, demonstrates that the group retains much of its military capacity, military analysts say.

The recent rebel attacks, coupled with the criticism of the paramilitary legislation, have also revived a debate over whether the government has hyped its accomplishments to help Mr. Uribe secure a constitutional amendment to permit his re-election next year.

"The rebels clearly don't want Uribe to win," said Sergio Jaramillo, a former senior Defense Ministry official who runs Ideas for Peace, a policy analysis group in Bogotá. "So they want to do things to discredit him."

The attacks have also undermined Mr. Uribe's long-held contention that there is no war in Colombia, but instead a terrorist assault carried out by criminals against a legitimate government. The distinction may appear semantic, but it is central to a strategy that seeks to marshal Colombians and foreign governments into supporting the government's pacification efforts with few questions asked.

Alfredo Rangel, a leading military analyst, said Mr. Uribe's aim was to delegitimize the rebels, who are already unpopular.

But the government's position also plays down Colombia's economic crisis. That underlying factor led the country's leading newsweekly, Semana, to declare in this week's cover story, "Yes, Mr. President, there is a war."

"In Colombia, there is an insurgent war," Mr. Rangel said. "There are political-military groups that are, in fact, armies with the military capacity to confront the armed forces, to control some zones of the country, and they cannot be reduced to simple bands of terrorists."

The government is also coming under heavy criticism from influential American lawmakers, the United Nations and some foreign diplomats for its new legislation governing the disarmament of a 15,000-member paramilitary group, the United Self-Defense Forces, whose commanders are wanted for widespread rights abuses.

Critics say the bill, presented to Colombia's Congress on Wednesday as an alternative to tougher legislation offered last year, shows the government is willing to permit paramilitary commanders to largely avoid punishment in exchange for demobilizing.

Lawmakers here and Congressional leaders in Washington, who are being asked to provide financing for the disarmament, say Mr. Uribe's plan does little to guarantee that paramilitary groups are dismantled or that commanders provide truthful information about their past activities, including drug trafficking to the United States.

Commanders are not required to reveal the inner workings of their organization, nor do commanders have to guarantee the disarmament of all their troops. Paramilitary leaders, even those wanted for war crimes, could also serve less than five years for their crimes, possibly on farms instead of in prisons.

In strongly worded letter to Mr. Uribe this month, a bipartisan group of influential American lawmakers explained that American financing for the demobilization required that the paramilitaries "fully disclose their knowledge of the operative structure" of the group. They must also forfeit illegally acquired assets, like land, comply with a cease-fire and be held accountable for crimes.

The letter's authors include Republicans like Representative Henry J. Hyde and Senator Richard G. Lugar, as well as Democratic Senators Patrick J. Leahy, Christopher J. Dodd and Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Rights groups say that Mr. Uribe's bill features a series of loopholes that would benefit paramilitary commanders. "The government has been bending over backwards to satisfy the paramilitary leadership," said José Miguel Vivanco, the Americas division director for the New York-based group Human Rights Watch.

Mr. Uribe and his closest aides have reacted defiantly to the criticism.

On Thursday, Vice President Francisco Santos referred to opposition legislation as products of "political vanities and political hate" pushed by international rights group with little grounding in Colombia's violent war.