"The urgent matter ... is the cessation of hostilities and the concentration" of paramilitary forces as the initial step in demobilizing, peace commissioner Luis Carlos Restrepo said.

"When concentrated, they can keep their arms, their uniforms and their internal structure but they cannot conduct any type of military action."

Areas where paramilitary forces would be massed will be under government control and government forces will protect the paramilitaries from leftist guerrillas, he said.

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe late Tuesday hailed the framework agreement for formal peace talks with right-wing paramilitaries as a step closer to peace. He said he hoped leftist rebel groups would take the cue.

"Its peace, or else. Either they negotiate or we defeat them, but we'll have peace. We must get out of this nightmare of violence," Uribe said during a visit to the war-torn eastern province of Arauca.

His comments followed an announcement that the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, the largest paramilitary group, had agreed to demobilize their 13,000 fighters by the end of 2005.

The proposed deal with the AUC would take about 70 percent of the right-wing paramilitaries out of Colombia's nearly 40-year-old civil war, in which more than 200,000 people have been killed.

Under outgoing president Andres Pastrana, the government held lengthy but fruitless peace talks with the 17,000-strong leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and the smaller National Liberation Army, or ELN.

WAR.WIRE