SAN VICENTE DEL CAGUAN, Colombia (AP) -- Colombian rebels on Saturday
invited U.S. officials to see firsthand that the insurgents are not drug
traffickers.

The invitation was offered as government-appointed delegates met with rebels
to chart an agenda for peace talks to end 34 years of civil war.

Jorge Briceno, the rebels' No. 2 commander, told reporters that the
government and its armed forces have deceived the United States about the
rebels' alleged involvement in drug trafficking ``to request aid to bombard
and fumigate Colombians.''

The government inaugurated peace talks on Thursday with the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

After the Saturday meeting adjourned, the two sides issued a brief joint
communique, saying: ``We are beginning a long, sensitive process in which
collective efforts will be necessary to achieve a new reality based on
profound social, political and economic change.''

The negotiators set their next meeting for Monday.

Last month, FARC held a private exploratory meeting in Costa Rica with U.S.
diplomats over FARC's avowed willingness to help curb the drug trade.

U.S. and Colombian officials say FARC earns as much as a half-billion
dollars a year from protecting drug crops, cocaine laboratories and
clandestine airstrips. The United States provides more than $100 million
annually in anti-narcotics aid for aerial crop eradication and equipment and
training for the police and military.

While not denying that some FARC fronts may have earnings from the drug
trade, Briceno said, ``The guerrillas are not drug traffickers. That is not
part of our foundation.''

U.S. officials have expressed concern that by withdrawing government troops
from a swath of southern Colombia to facilitate the peace dialogue, Colombia
might be permitting an increase in drug production in the region where
police say roughly a third of Colombia's coca grows.

Briceno also reiterated the group's denial that it is holding three U.S.
missionaries seized from a village in southern Panama on Jan. 31, 1993. The
three men, from the New Tribes Mission based in Sanford, Fla., were last
heard from a year after their abduction.