AS THE GOVERNMENT DEPLOYS, COLOMBIA'S REBELS LIE IN WAIT

EAR FLORENCIA, Colombia - As the first rays of dawn cut through the jungle
canopy, a rebel stripped down his Kalashnikov while one of his comrades
plopped ammunition into the drum of a grenade launcher.

After three years of relative calm here, the guerrillas from the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, are back on a combat
footing, and government troops are pouring back into the region, after
peace negotiations collapsed last month.

While the military says that the rebels have fled, FARC units appear to
have split up into units of 60 members at most, and dispersed into the
jungle and savannah of the former demilitarized zone, a Switzerland-sized
enclave where talks had been held.

''We're not running away. We just don't want to fight in the towns,'' a
rebel leader, Fabian Ramirez, told the Globe last week at his combat camp
on one edge of the former safe zone. ''We'll wait for the army's Rapid
Deployment Force and special units to come into the countryside, and then
they will meet up with us.''

Ramirez is the second-in-command of the FARC's battle-hardened Southern
Bloc division, which has 5,000 combatants.

Security is tight here; the rebels insisted on taking a reporter to the
camp under cover of darkness and in silence.

The guerrillas repeatedly paused as they strained to hear a government
AC-47 aircraft, a sophisticated, heavily-armored reconnaissance plane, as
it droned in the distance.

About 11,000 army troops are being airlifted into the region. While they
have managed to control the five main towns in the zone, the countryside
remains far beyond their grasp.

The FARC is skilled in rural hit-and-run warfare. Ramirez, one of the
architects of some of the heaviest defeats inflicted on the army in 38
years of conflict, said his fighters had split into units as small as 12
fighters, presenting a highly mobile and difficult target for the military
to detect or hit.

But before those patrols begin attacking the army, Ramirez said, they will
wait to see how many soldiers are deployed in the area and what firepower -
particularly attack helicopters and fighter-bombers - the military will muster.

He said it may take several weeks for the army to muster the confidence to
venture into the countryside, but it is then that the intense fighting will
start. So far, only sporadic skirmishes have been reported close to the
regional capital, Florencia, far beyond the limits of the former
demilitarized zone.

Ramirez and his fighters are stepping up a campaign of infrastructure
sabotage, in actions designed to sow chaos and to punish the government for
breaking off peace talks. For about a week, communications and power have
been cut off in much of the southern province of Caqueta, after
telecommunication towers and electricity pylons were hit.

''The energy and communications industries are in the hands of the big
economic conglomerates and the multinationals. Now it is time for them to
suffer the rigors of war,'' Ramirez said, holding his US-made AR-15 assault
rifle with one hand as he petted his golden retriever.

The FARC has also bombed a number of bridges, isolating Caqueta from the
center of the country and the capital, Bogota, via overland routes.

The main highway between Florencia and San Vicente, the main town in the
former safe zone, is strewn with the wrecks of cars and trucks that
guerrillas have burned after setting up roadblocks. Traffic has slowed to a
trickle, and was paralyzed for almost a week.

In villages along the routes between Florencia and San Vicente del Caguan,
supplies are running low, fueling fears that all-out war is at hand.

''The president said he was going to protect and yet the army has no way to
control even the highway,'' a civilian said as he waited to fill a plastic
tank with gasoline rationed by the pump owner to $10 worth per family in
the village of Doncello.

In a nationally televised speech on Feb. 20, when he announced the end of
the peace process, President Andres Pastrana warned of a possible surge in
attacks around the country. Since then, clashes have been reported in rural
areas around Bogota, but the rebels have not launched a full-blown bombing
campaign in Colombia's main cities, as many had feared.

Many military analysts, though, predict that the FARC may unleash an urban
campaign in an attempt to divert government forces from the southeast.
There have been signs that the FARC has been planning such attacks.

In a recent interview, Carlos Antonio Lozada, former head of FARC
operations in the capital, said urban guerrillas had gotten training,
especially in bomb-making techniques and weapons handling - a departure
from their tasks of fund-raising and information gathering.

One of the biggest questions is how much the FARC may have grown in three
years. Military officials have frequently accused the FARC of stepping up
recruiting and training in the demilitarized zone.

Late last month, Klaus Nyholm, head of the UN Drug Control Program in
Colombia, accused the rebels of deepening their ties to the cocaine trade.
If true, the FARC could have brought in millions of extra dollars to
finance the war machine.

One senior rebel leader, who requested anonymity, speculated that the FARC
may have doubled its numbers in three years; this would put the total
combat force at 25,000 to 30,000 fighters. No government or international
sources have confirmed such a figure.

According to a rebel strategic plan mapped out in the early 1980s, and
forecast to take perhaps 30 years, the FARC set a goal of expanding to at
least 32,000 fighters, of building up huge stockpiles of weapons, and then
of launching an all-out assault on Bogota. But there is no suggestion that
such an attack, which the rebels dubbed ''the first great offensive,'' is
imminent.

Ramirez sidestepped questions on specific details of rebel growth.

''As long as unemployment and poverty are rising and hospitals and schools
are closing, then we will recruit more fighters,'' he said. ''People find
they have no other form of protest except to join insurgent ranks.''