COLOMBIAN REBELS CALL U.S. HOSTAGES CIA AGENTS

BOGOTA, Colombia, March 15 (Reuters) - A Colombian rebel commander told
local television three U.S. Defense Department contractors held prisoner
for a year are CIA agents and that chances for a deal to free them and
other hostages are slim.

"They're Americans. Our information is they are CIA agents. Verified," Raul
Reyes, a senior member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a
guerrilla army known by the Spanish initials FARC, told Noticias Uno late
on Sunday.

The FARC captured civilian contractors Thomas Howes, Marc Gonsalves and
Keith Stansell when their light aircraft crashed on a mission to spray drug
crops in southern Colombia in February 2003. The rebels killed another
American and a Colombian who survived the crash.

The United States and the three men themselves have denied they work for
the CIA, saying they were among hundreds of civilian contractors hired by
Washington to assist Colombia's war on cocaine.

Speaking to a Colombian journalist in their jungle prison some time after
the middle of last year, the Americans said their captors had confused the
name of a company contracted by the U.S. government to help the Colombians,
CIAO, with the CIA.

Reyes said contacts, mediated by the Roman Catholic Church, with President
Alvaro Uribe's government over a possible deal to free hostages in exchange
for jailed rebels were leading nowhere.

"The government isn't interested in a deal," Reyes said.

The FARC has placed the three Americans on a list of more than 50 hostages,
including soldiers, politicians and former presidential candidate Ingrid
Betancourt, that it wants to swap for guerrillas in government jails.

Uribe, strongly supported by the United States, has boosted military
spending and launched an offensive against the FARC as well as redoubling
efforts to destroy the cocaine crops it relies on for funding.

The FARC is Colombia's largest illegal army, and has been fighting for 40
years to establish a socialist state.