COLOMBIA'S PRESIDENT VOWS TO DEFEAT REBELS

BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) -- President Alvaro Uribe vowed Thursday to
defeat left-wing rebels and urged foreign governments to take a tough
line with the rebel fighters a day after they killed 19 people in an
attack.

Hundreds of fighters from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia,
or FARC, fired homemade mortars on Wednesday in their deadliest
assault this year. The authorities said that 17 police officers and 2
civilians were killed in the assault, near Tierradentro.

The attack was part of a two-week guerrilla offensive that has
shattered hopes of talks to free rebel-held hostages and to set up
peace negotiations with Mr. Uribe, who has been backed by the United
States in his effort to end Latin America's longest-running insurgency.

Eleven rebels were also killed in the fighting. Army attack
helicopters scoured the hillsides around Tierradentro.

"If we do not finish off these bandits, they will keep killing our
police," Mr. Uribe said after talking with relatives at a funeral in
Tierradentro.

"The international community should not even think of considering that
the FARC are not terrorists," he said. "You are a terrorist if you
kill a police officer or a civilian."

FARC, which has fought for four decades to establish a socialist
state, is listed as a terrorist group by the United States and the
European Union. But the rebels recently asked European governments to
remove them from their lists.

Mr. Uribe has received millions in American aid to fight cocaine
production, which is a major source of financing for the rebels. He
was re-elected in May after Colombians praised his security crackdown
for reducing violence and reclaiming urban areas and highways from the
rebels.

But political analysts say the recent attacks are a show of force by
the FARC to prove its military capacity, move into territory abandoned
by paramilitary groups linked to the government and secure coca leaf
crops.

Mr. Uribe pulled back from possible talks with the FARC over hostages
after blaming rebels for a bombing in Bogota two weeks ago. Another
car bombing over the weekend at a military base in Villavicencio
killed two people.