The Cuban-inspired National Liberation Army (ELN), Colombia's second
                  largest guerrilla group, ignored a June 30 deadline set by the church to free
                  the remaining 36 hostages seized at gunpoint while attending mass on May
                  30 in an affluent Cali suburb.

                  The abduction was strongly condemned by Pope John Paul as sacrilegious
                  and outraged Colombians accustomed to kidnappings throughout the
                  country's bloody three decade civil war.

                  "They have committed a terrible wrong and estranged themselves from the
                  holy communion of the church," said Monsignor Isaias Duarte, archbishop of
                  the southwestern Colombian city. He said the excommunication could be
                  lifted if the rebels release the remaining church hostages.

                  The stigma of excommunication is taken seriously in Colombia, whose 40
                  million inhabitants are overwhelmingly Roman Catholic. The ELN's supreme
                  commander, Nicolas Rodriguez, one of Colombia's most wanted men,
                  admitted in June the threat of excommunication deeply worried many of his
                  fighters, around 95 percent of whom are devout Catholics.

                  Rodriguez, who goes by the alias "Gabino," has publicly apologized to the
                  church for the kidnapping that originally involved 143 people. He said he did
                  not order the raid and travelled to the Vatican in June on a clandestine
                  mission to discuss an end to the hostage crisis.

                  But Cardinal Dario Castrillon, a Colombian and close advisor to the Pope,
                  said, "'Gabino' told me very clearly that he was not going to let all the
                  hostages go without paying a ransom."

                  The ELN, which was led by a former Catholic priest until 1998, gains the
                  majority of its revenues from kidnapping. In another high-profile abduction
                  on April 12, the ELN hijacked a commercial plane with 41 passengers and
                  crew, of whom 16 remain hostage.

                  Senior ELN commanders have said the kidnappings were aimed at forcing
                  President Andres Pastrana's government to reconsider its demand for
                  control over part of the northern Bolivar province as an inducement to enter
                  into peace talks.

                  In November last year, the government ceded control of a Switzerland-sized
                  area in the south of the country to the largest rebel group, the Revolutionary
                  Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), as a confidence-building measure for
                  peace talks.

                  But it balked at the smaller ELN's demand for a similar deal, and broke off
                  preliminary negotiations with the group in March. Pastrana has said peace
                  talks with ELN will not begin until remaining hostages from the kidnappings
                  is agreed.

                  Meanwhile, talks with the FARC remained stalled after the two sides failed
                  on Friday to agree on the composition of an international team of observers
                  to oversee talks. On the same day, a rebel bomb attack on an army
                  barracks in the northwest city of Medellin killed 10 people and maimed 38
                  others.