VANESSA ARRINGTON
  Associated Press

  LA MACARENA, Colombia - This bitterly poor town served as a safe haven for rebels as part of a government-sanctioned demilitarized zone that launched Colombia's peace process, but residents say they were forgotten once talks ruptured.

  But on Sunday, President Alvaro Uribe made his first visit to the region since taking office and promoted a traveling brigade of volunteer doctors in La Macarena.

  Hundreds of people lined the town's muddy main road, cheering as Uribe stopped to kiss children on the cheek and chat with elderly ladies as he made his way to the hospital where medics were giving free eye exams and scheduling surgeries.

  "Some health brigades have been organized ... to help awake in the nation a sense of more profound solidarity," Uribe told a small crowd after visiting the facility.

  La Macarena, a town of 3,300 residents in southern Colombia, was part of a Switzerland-sized demilitarized zone ceded to the rebels' Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, by former President Andres Pastrana to launch peace talks.

  The leftist FARC and a smaller rebel army are fighting the government and right-wing paramilitary groups in a 38-year civil conflict that kills some 3,500 people, mostly civilians, a year.

  In June of 2001, the town was the stage for a dramatic release by the FARC of 242 war prisoners. It was the high point in the peace process - a time during which armed rebels roamed freely throughout La Macarena and the rest of the demilitarized zone.

  But the three-year negotiations collapsed in February of 2002 after the rebels hijacked a plane and kidnapped a senator on board.

  Many accused the rebels of using the safe haven to produce drugs, hide kidnap victims, and stage attacks against civilians and state security forces.

  One of the toughest critics of the peace process was Uribe, who came to power last year on promises to crack down on the armed groups. During a town hall meeting in southern Colombia on Saturday, the president vowed that not a "millimeter" of territory would be ceded to the rebels to lure them into peace talks.

  But many have complained that Uribe's administration has forgotten La Macarena and the four other towns that comprised the zone, focusing instead on eastern
  Colombia's violent, oil-rich state of Arauca.

  Part of a lush jungle region on the southerly point of a nature reserve, the La Macarena township is one of the poorest regions in Colombia. Eighty percent of the
  population lives in poverty, according to the social welfare ministry.

  In a report last October, Amnesty International accused the Colombian government and the international community of abandoning the region following the collapse of the peace talks. The report cites dozens of politically motivated killings and death threats to residents since the government took back the safe haven.

  Because the rebels once operated freely in the zone, residents are often accused of being rebel collaborators - making them targets for the paramilitary groups and
  Colombian security forces, the report said.

  The government blames the FARC for most of the abuses.

  "This shows that the government wants to help us," said Gilberto Guiza, a 60-year-old farmer. "Because until now they had left us to fend for ourselves."