Colombia finally strikes at rebels' top leadership

BOGOTA (Reuters) - The killing of two Colombian rebel commanders in less than a week, one betrayed and dismembered by his own bodyguard, has ended four decades of government failure to hit the guerrillas' top leadership.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, had never before lost a member of its seven-man secretariat, so the two deaths in quick succession were a historic blow to the communist insurgency.

Rebel fighters, harried by a six-year-old government offensive, are deserting in record numbers, providing intelligence to an army backed by billions of dollars in U.S. aid, including American military advisors who help plan strikes.

The guerrillas continue kidnapping and blowing up energy installations as part of the war but military officials believe the FARC is now slowly imploding.

Even opposition figures admit that conservative President Alvaro Uribe has begun to show long-awaited results.

Raul Reyes, the FARC's No. 2 leader, died in a March 1 raid carried out inside Ecuador that set off a regional diplomatic crisis. The army tracked Reyes down by intercepting a satellite phone call he made from along the Ecuador border.

Ivan Rios, another member of the FARC's secretariat, was shot dead last week by his security chief, who later told reporters that morale in the group is at an all-time low.

"It's acceptable to lose a leader like Reyes in an enemy attack, but the way Rios died shows the internal degradation of the FARC," said political analyst Alvaro Jimenez, a former member of the demobilized M-19 leftist rebel group.

"That's why Rios's death is the harder blow," he said.

Uribe was first elected in 2002 promising to crush the FARC. Investor confidence in Colombia is soaring and the president remains highly popular despite a scandal linking some of his closest political allies to right-wing death squads.

Many Colombians expect a counter-offensive from the rebel group as it tries to prove it still has strength, but some analysts are skeptical.

"How can FARC commanders plan an offensive if they can't talk on their phones and can't trust their own bodyguards?" said one Bogota-based diplomat.

The FARC, which started as a militant peasant movement in 1964, still controls wide rural areas in the south used to produce the cocaine that helps fund its revolution. Estimates of its fighting force range from 8,000 to 17,000.

TEMPTED BY REWARD MONEY

The government said it plans to pay a $2.6 million reward to the guerrilla known as "Rojas" for shooting his former boss Rios, and then chopping off his right hand to offer as proof.

Rojas is also expected to face trial for the killing and for other crimes committed while in the FARC's ranks.

He said many guerrillas are tired of running from the army and having their communications and food supplies cut off. He predicted that more rebel fighters are likely to kill their superiors as a lucrative way out of the war.

Demobilized rebels and right-wing militia members from Colombia's long war face a maximum of eight years in jail for crimes such as drug smuggling and murder.

The FARC is holding hundreds of hostages, including three U.S. defense contractors taken in 2003 and French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt, snatched the year before.

Both the government and the rebels say they want to swap the kidnap victims for jailed guerrillas. But many imprisoned rebels say they want to demobilize rather than return to the ranks, complicating a possible exchange which France's government has said is a top foreign policy priority.

The FARC, widely despised in Colombia, has in recent weeks tried to win some international support by releasing six local politicians it had been holding hostage for years.

Venezuela's left-wing president, Hugo Chavez, brokered the deals to release the hostages and has called on foreign governments to stop labeling the FARC a terrorist group.

Reyes was involved in preliminary talks with France and Colombia about freeing Betancourt. The FARC says it wants to continue the negotiations but it may be too busy reorganizing itself to move forward on a hostage swap plan.

"There is a snowball effect in that as FARC morale deteriorates and more of its fighters desert, the army gets more intelligence information from those deserters which allows it to plan better attacks," said Bogota-based political commentator Ricardo Avila.

"I'm not saying this is the beginning of the end of the FARC," he said, "but it could be going in that direction."

(Editing by Kieran Murray)