By Hugh Bronstein

ARAUCA, Colombia, July 6 (Reuters) - An intensifying turf war between Colombia's two main rebel armies is pushing thousands of poor farmers out of their homes as one of the guerrilla groups inches toward peace with the government.

An average 200 families a month have registered with officials in the eastern province of Arauca since August 2006, saying they had to flee the rebel-on-rebel violence.

"We are stuck in the middle," said one displaced farmer who declined to give his name. He is living in the provincial capital, Arauca, where there are not enough jobs to go around.

He said family farms are regularly approached by armed guerrillas asking for food or lodging. To refuse means death but to cooperate means a rival group will likely seek revenge.

"Anyone accused of cooperating with one side is subject to violence from the other. That's what's behind this wave of displacements," said Dolka Arias, provincial head of Accion Social, the government's social services agency.

Starting in the 1970s, the National Liberation Army, or ELN, was unrivaled in this flat, agriculturally-rich province filled with cattle ranches and commercial routes ripe for taxation by the rebels and other criminal bands.

In the late 1990s, the larger Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, started operations in Arauca, which borders Venezuela.

The battle between the two has heated up throughout this Andean country as the ELN gets closer to negotiating a cease-fire with the government. The FARC is trying to grab territory while the ELN strives to maintain a strong bargaining position in the peace talks.

Both groups were organized in the 1960s to overthrow the government in the name of communism.

PEACE TALKS IN CUBA

The ELN is holding negotiations with the government in Cuba. After a year and a half of talks they say they expect to clinch a cease-fire deal by the end of this month.

The FARC wants no part of talks with conservative President Alvaro Uribe and has taken off the gloves with the ELN, calling them traitors to the rebel cause.

"Provoked by the peace talks, the FARC has decided to declare war on the ELN and the ELN has responded in kind," said political analyst Alvaro Jimenez, himself a former rebel with the disbanded M19 group.

The turf battle is especially intense in Arauca, where peasants have little choice but to join the more than 3 million Colombians who have been displaced by four decades of war.

In the 1980s, Colombian cattle ranchers and cocaine lords organized paramilitary militias to ensure protection from rebel kidnappings and land grabs. The right-wing paramilitaries made their own move into Arauca after 2000.

Most paramilitaries have disbanded under a peace deal offering them benefits including reduced jail terms for crimes ranging from drug trafficking to torture and massacre. But the demobilizations have done little to help Arauca.

"Not even when the paramilitaries were fighting here in 2003 and 2004 did we see so many families displaced," said Gloria Cuitiva, head of the local state human rights office.

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