BOGOTA, Colombia -- (AP) -- Soldiers and elite police trudged on foot through
             dense jungle Monday, trying to reach the site of a weekend rebel attack where
             dozens of police officers were feared dead.

             Authorities have been unable to confirm reports that as many as 60 officers were
             killed in the 12-hour assault on a frontier police post by an estimated 800 leftist
             guerrillas, who fired homemade missiles from modified propane gas cylinders.

             The assault Sunday in Mitu, the remote capital of southeastern Vaupes state, near
             the border with Brazil, appeared to underscore the guerrillas' growing military
             might in the run-up to peace talks with President Andres Pastrana to end
             Colombia's 34-year civil war.

             Pastrana has promised to withdraw all troops from a large southern region by
             Saturday to allow peace talks with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia,
             whose guerrillas have been piling up victories against ineffective and dispirited
             army troops.

             The president, who was headed back to Bogota on Monday evening after cutting
             short a state visit to Venezuela, had yet to make any statements about the rebel
             attack.

             His peace envoy condemned the attack, but insisted that Pastrana still intended to
             personally attend the opening of the peace talks, planned for the coming weeks in
             the 16,200-square-mile area where the army is pulling out.

             ``It is regrettable that at a time when we're promoting peace, these kinds of actions
             occur, because instead of acts of war, what Colombia needs are acts of peace,''
             the envoy, Victor G. Ricardo, said in a TV interview.

             It was feared that some of the police officers may have been taken prisoner by the
             rebels, who have held at least 248 police and soldiers seized in battles during the
             past two years.

             Pastrana has so far refused a guerrilla proposal to exchange the men for 452 jailed
             rebels before peace talks begin.

             The 200 troops advancing Monday toward Mitu were dropped by helicopter
             about six miles from the town of 15,000 inhabitants, and were proceeding carefully
             to avoid possible rebel counterattacks, police said.

             ``We know that there are ambushes, and we know they are waiting to confront
             our people,'' police Gen. Luis Ernesto Gilibert said Monday. ``We have no
             knowledge of what happened in the fighting, how many wounded and how many
             dead we have.''

             In its last radio contact at 2 p.m. Sunday, the 120-man police garrison reported
             four officers killed and nine wounded.

             The jungle town -- normally accessible only by air and water -- was cut off from
             communications when the rebels seized control of the airport and blew up the
             phone company's microwave tower.

             The guerrillas have not commented on the attack, which would be the largest since
             an August offensive in which 143 police and soldiers were killed and 130 taken
             prisoner.
 

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