Colombia's government and leftist guerrillas argued Sunday over whether two police officers and a soldier captured by the rebels are hostages or prisoners of war. The government delegation to peace talks here referred to them as kidnapping victims, and urged the FARC rebels to make good on their stated willingness to release them. The three men were captured by the guerrillas on January 25. "Each act like this is a direct attack on the peace process," said the head of the government delegation to the talks, Humberto de la Calle.

Leftist rebels holding peace talks with Colombia's government called on it Saturday to hand over a huge amount of land to farmers so as to to address the key issue of rural poverty. The FARC guerrilla group emerged in the 1960s precisely because of the huge gap in wealth between peasants and ultra-wealthy owners of huge haciendas, or estates. Land redistribution is one of the most critical issues on the agenda of peace talks that began in November in a bid to end Colombia's conflict, which has gone on for nearly 50 years and is Latin America's oldest.

Two Germans being held hostage by the leftist ELN guerrilla group in Colombia are tourists, the German embassy said Tuesday after the rebels accused the two of being spies. "They are retirees who were in the region as tourists," the embassy said in a statement, acknowledging that they were being held against their will. It said the German foreign ministry had formed "a crisis management team that was in contact with all the relevant parties."

BERLIN, Feb 5 (Reuters) - Two German men kidnapped by Colombian rebels are tourists, Germany's foreign ministry said on Tuesday, after their captors suggested they were spies. The National Liberation Army (ELN), Colombia's second-largest guerrilla group, said on Monday it had captured two men believed to be from Germany and considered them to be intelligence agents because the pair could not explain why they were in the area.