By Hugh Bronstein

BOGOTA, Oct 10 (Reuters) - Colombian soldiers are executing a rising number of peasants in rural areas and passing them off as leftist rebels killed in combat, an international human rights commission claimed in a report released on Wednesday.

In response, Colombia's government said it had established a committee to probe the reports of illegal executions, but also accused the guerrillas of using tactics meant to disguise its fighters as civilians.

Under a hard line taken by President Alvaro Uribe, the army has pushed the rebels from the cities and major highways, fueling an economic rebirth in this Andean country.

But abuses by soldiers have risen, according to the International Observation Mission on Extrajudicial Executions and Impunity in Colombia.

There have been 955 documented cases of illegal executions by the army over the last five years, compared with 577 cases in the previous five, according to the mission, which includes lawyers from Spain, France and the United States.

In many cases, soldiers dressed corpses of their victims as guerrillas in order get credit for killing rebels in combat, the report said. The allegations could further complicate Colombia's effort at clinching a U.S. free-trade pact as Democrats on Capitol Hill examine Uribe's human rights record.

"We will diagnose how much truth there is in these accusations and, if there is some, take preventive measures within the framework of our human rights policy," Deputy Defense Minister Sergio Jaramillo told Reuters.

Making the investigation more difficult, he said the four-decade-old Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, has reduced its use of uniformed troops and shifted toward smaller groups of fighters dressed in civilian garb.

REBELS DRESSED AS CIVILIANS?

"That has created a gray area that is difficult to deal with," he added.

The government contends it has no tolerance for rights abuses by soldiers and accuses rebels of trying to discredit the army by portraying all rebels killed in combat as innocent peasants.

"We have information from many sources that the FARC has literally ordered the families of those who fall in combat to go out and claim they were the victims of extrajudicial killings," Jaramillo said.

More than 31,000 right-wing paramilitaries have turned in their guns under a peace deal offering benefits including reduced jail terms for crimes such as massacres and torture.

Uribe told the U.N. General Assembly last month that paramilitarism has ended in Colombia, and government troops are the only ones still fighting the rebels.

"If this monopoly on force means, as the figures show, that the army is increasing illegal executions, then Colombia is simply trading crimes committed by paramilitaries for crimes committed by the army," said mission member David Martinez.

Uribe was re-elected last year after cutting urban crime as part of his U.S.-backed crackdown on the guerrillas.

"Under Uribe, civilians in rebel-controlled rural areas are considered rebel collaborators," Martinez said. "This is a fundamental principal of his government, under which there has been an increase in arbitrary arrests and illegal executions."

Jaramillo said the government is taking the accusations seriously but said it was "absolutely false" that anyone is assumed without proof to be a rebel collaborator.

AlertNet news is provided by