Colombian paramilitary leader calls for ceasefire 

BOGOTA -- The top leader of Colombia's most powerful right-wing paramilitary group has called for a ceasefire with leftist guerrillas to stop the bloodletting in the country.

"I don't want one more person killed. I am ready to order a ceasefire tomorrow, whenever FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) guerrillas say so," Carlos Castano said in a radio interview Tuesday.

Castano, who heads the Self-defense Units of Colombia (AUC), said he was also prepared to meet with FARC commander Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda to agree on a "humanitarian code of honor" to spare civilians further suffering.

It was the first olive branch tended by the AUC commander to leftist guerrillas after years of bloody fighting that has fatally caught hundreds of poor villagers in the middle.

While neither the FARC, the country's strongest rebel group, nor the National Liberation Army (ELN), the second-largest, have responded to Castano's call, the Colombian government was quick to welcome the move.

"It's a proposal that would reduce murder and barbarism in the country," Defense Minister Luis Fernando Ramirez told reporters here late Tuesday.

"Any proposal that calls for a ceasefire by illegal groups, that lessens violence and murder ... must be welcomed," he added.

Castano, who in a separate television interview said he was driven to violence at 19 after his father and sister were kidnapped and killed by guerrillas, told Radionet by telephone that things had gone too far.

He pointed to the August 13 murder of the cherished reporter and humorist Jaime Garzon as a sign of how "irrational" violence had become.

He denied having anything to do with Garzon's shooting death, but did not shun responsibility in the recent massacre of some 50 villagers in the northeastern Catatumbo region, which he said was a consequence of war.

Castano, accused the guerrillas of insincerity in its peace dealings with the government of President Andres Pastrana, saying that both the FARC and ELN "continue to carry out indiscriminate kidnappings and terrorist bombings."

In his television interview, Castano, 34, said his group would "support an intervention by the United States in Colombia," a growing rumor which Washington insists is groundless.

"We firmly believe that (US) participation as an observer, guarantor (of peace) and as a country that helps rebuild our homeland would be welcome because it is urgent and necessary," said Castano, his back turned to the camera.