By Patrick Markey

BOGOTA, Sept 7 (Reuters) - Wearing combat fatigues in the dense jungle, a young Dutch woman who joined Colombia's Marxist guerrillas appeared on Friday in a video broadcast on local television sending a greeting to her family in Holland.

The story of "Eillen" surfaced this week when Colombia's El Tiempo newspaper printed passages it said were taken from the Dutch woman's diary, captured by the army during a recent raid on a guerrilla camp.

The undated video provided a rare glimpse of a foreign recruit into the FARC -- the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia -- which began as a peasant army fighting for socialism in the 1960s, but which the government says is now deeply involved in cocaine smuggling.

"I know this has been a very difficult time for my mother and father," said the woman, who local Dutch media identified as Tanja Nijmeijer and who relatives said had joined FARC ranks several years ago.

Local television reported the video was made by the woman's mother during a visit to a clandestine rebel camp and was found on a computer captured during the same raid when Nijmeijer's diary was discovered.

Latin America's oldest insurgency, the FARC has been driven back into the jungles by President Alvaro Uribe's U.S.-backed security campaign. Violence from the four-decade conflict has eased, but the FARC remain a potent force in rural areas.

Uribe has often complained about the FARC's campaign for political legitimacy in Europe. Washington and European governments brand the rebels a terrorist group, which is still fighting, setting off bombs and laying landmines.

Dutch authorities have contacted Colombian counterparts and Holland's secret service is examining whether it should better monitor possible recruitment efforts by FARC.

Nijmeijer's family said they kept her rebel life secret since she left to join the FARC because they were worried about her security, according to a letter from them received by local Dutch broadcaster NOS.

In 2004, Tanja contacted the family through e-mail, saying she was a member of FARC, the letter said, and her mother visited Tanja in Colombia in November 2005. She last contacted the family in May 2007.

"Tanja has always been very sensitive about poverty in the world ... but by joining the FARC she has gone to extremes with her idealism," the letter said.

Details of the Dutch FARC member surfaced as the international community seeks to broker a deal to free hostages held for years by rebels, including French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt and three American contract workers.

"I am fed up, fed up with the FARC, with the communal life ... What type of organization is this where some have cash, cigarettes and sweets and the rest are just ordered about," she wrote in one part of the diary, according to El Tiempo.

"The jungle is my home." she wrote in another passage.

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