By Hugh Bronstein

BOGOTA, June 25 (Reuters) - Following a weekend of deadly rebel attacks, Colombia hardened its position on Monday against providing a safe haven for guerrillas during hostage talks, making a prisoner swap more unlikely than ever.

The government blames the rebels for a series of bombs that killed three people, including a 3-year-old girl, and injured dozens in the port city Buenaventura during the weekend.

The city remained in chaos on Monday despite an increased police and army presence.

President Alvaro Uribe said the attacks reinforced his refusal to grant a safe-haven area to negotiate a swap of about 60 rebel hostages, including three American defense contractors and French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt, for guerrillas held in government prisons.

"Clearing an area of government troops would only allow the terrorists to fortify their criminal capacity," Uribe shouted, his fist raised, in a speech to graduating police officers.

"They are the ones who must demilitarize," he said.

The rebels insist that Uribe remove troops from a New York City-sized rural area to set the stage for hostage swap talks.

Betancourt was taken by the guerrillas during her 2002 campaign for Colombia's presidency. The Americans were captured in 2003 while on a mission to find crops used to make cocaine.

Buenaventura, on the Pacific coast, is a hub for exporting the drug and importing arms used by left-wing guerrillas and far-right paramilitaries in Colombia's four-decade-old war. Funded by the drug trade, both groups are battling for control of cocaine shipments headed to the United States and Asia.

Mayor Saulo Quinonez told reporters on Monday that Buenaventura, which handles half of Colombia's international commerce and almost all its coffee exports, remains lawless. "There is no one specific armed group that controls Buenaventura. We do not have control either," he said.

Colombia, the world's biggest producer of cocaine, has received billions of dollars in U.S. aid to crack down on the drug trade. Democrats in control of the U.S. Congress are toughening conditions on that aid, saying cocaine exports remain strong at more than 600 tonnes per year.

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