LA MACHACA Colombia AP Leftist rebels have no intention of giving up their weapons even if a peace accord is reached with President Andres Pastrana's government a top guerrilla negotiator said. ``The government knows that we're not going to surrender our weapons'' said Joaquin Gomez one of three subcomandantes representing the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia or FARC in a peace dialogue that has yet to begin. ``They are talking with us because we have them and these same weapons will be a guarantee afterwards that the agreements are carried out'' Gomez the 51-year-old chief of the rebel's southern military bloc told reporters Monday in this remote southern hamlet. The government has not set any conditions for the talks though Pastrana has appealed for a truce at least through the Christmas and New Year's holiday. The rebels have refused to halt hostilities however. Three soldiers a police officer and nine civilians were killed in separate rebel attacks Monday and Tuesday in northwestern Colombia authorities said. Accompanied by a dozen bodyguards Gomez arrived in La Machaca which is little more than a cluster of huts along a dirt road driving a green Ford sport utility vehicle. Another rebel spokesman 33-year-old Fabian Ramirez came in another vehicle and sported a Che Guevara wristwatch. The reporters arriving from the other direction had to first clear a rebel checkpoint. Gomez a former university lecturer said Pastrana has not honored his promise to remove all soldiers from a 16200-square-mile 42000-square-kilometer swath of southern Colombia where the peace talks are to take place. He said there will be no peace talks until the pullout now nearly a month delayed is complete. Pastrana says the more than 100 soldiers that remain at a military base in nearby San Vicente del Caguan the largest town in the pullout zone are unarmed and are there to support government negotiators a claim rejected by the rebels. The rebel negotiators' next scheduled meeting with Pastrana's peace commissioner is set for Dec. 11. More than 400 kilometers 250 miles away nine civilians and one police officer were killed in an attack Tuesday by FARC fighters on a police post in the town of San Francisco said Antioquia state police spokesman Haten Dasuki. He could not provide details on how the civilians died other than to say that the FARC used car bombs. In the nearby town of Cocorna three soldiers were killed in an ambush by rebels of the National Liberation Army or ELN the country's second-largest guerrilla force the army said. The soldiers had arrived to help a besieged police post which a column of about 100 ELN fighters attacked at 6 p.m. on Monday said deputy police commander Gen. Alfredo Salgado. He said seven police officers were missing and possibly captured. APW19981201.0154.txt.body.html APW19981201.1064.txt.body.html