By Hugh Bronstein

BOGOTA, June 12 (Reuters) - Colombian rebels will not move to free hostages including French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt until the government demilitarizes an area for negotiating a prisoner swap, a top guerrilla leader said.

In a local newspaper interview published on Tuesday, Raul Reyes, No. 2 commander of the 17,000-member Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, said hostages such as Betancourt and three American defense contractors will be kept in secret jungle camps until a safe-haven zone is established.

But President Alvaro Uribe, popular for his U.S.-backed military crackdown on the Marxist insurgents, has based his security policy on never ceding territory to the rebels by withdrawing Colombian troops from the field.

"There has been no change in the president's position," a government spokesman said on Tuesday.

At the urging of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Uribe last week released about 150 guerrillas including FARC "Foreign Minister" Rodrigo Granda from government jails. The gesture was meant to set the stage for a prisoner swap.

In the FARC's first official response to the move, Reyes insisted that Uribe temporarily pull soldiers and police from an area the size of New York City to provide a venue for talks over the release of 60 politicians, police and soldiers held for as long as nine years.

"The FARC firmly maintains its proposal for a humanitarian exchange with a verified demilitarized zone," Reyes said.

The guerrillas were organized in the 1960s to force land reforms and other measures meant to close the wide gap that separates rich and poor in this Andean country.

They still control wide swathes of countryside and have grown rich on Colombia's multibillion-dollar cocaine trade.

Betancourt was captured during her 2002 campaign for the Colombian presidency. A year later Americans Marc Gonsalves, Keith Stansell and Thomas Howes were kidnapped by the guerrillas while on a mission to locate illegal crops used to make cocaine.

Uribe first won office in 2002 after blasting previous President Andres Pastrana for ceding a Switzerland-sized piece of territory to the FARC in a failed attempt to clinch a peace deal. He was reelected in a landslide last year.

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