HAVANA (AP) -- Colombian rebel leader Raul Reyes met in Havana on Tuesday
                  with a Colombian exile who's playing a key role in peace talks aimed at ending
                  their nation's long-running insurgency.

                  "It's to talk -- talk about how to advance the peace," Reyes told The Associated
                  Press at a hotel in Havana.

                  Reyes, a leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, declined to
                  comment further on his visit or say whether he would meet with President Fidel
                  Castro. The Cuban government is not expected to be a party to talks, but Castro
                  has said he favors a negotiated peace in Colombia's 36-year war.

                  Reyes met with Alvaro Leyva Duran, a former Colombian minister of energy and
                  mines, lives in Costa Rica, where he was granted political asylum in 1998. At the
                  time he was under investigation in his homeland for allegedly receiving money
                  from the Cali drug cartel.

                  Leyva Duran was formally charged in absentia last year, but many in Colombia
                  consider the criminal charges a political vendetta by former President Ernesto
                  Samper.

                  Reyes traveled last week to Alcala de Henares, Spain, where he and Fabio
                  Valencia, a government delegate at the peace talks, attended a forum on the
                  Colombian peace process. At the forum, the Colombians said they hoped to
                  reach a cease-fire.

                  During a meeting in Madrid beforehand, Reyes and Valencia talked with Antonio
                  Garcia, military chief of the National Liberation Army, or ELN, Colombia's other
                  major guerrilla group. It was the first time since failed 1992 peace talks that
                  Colombia's two most important rebel groups had met with a government
                  negotiator.

                  The FARC, which has about 15,000 fighters, is the larger of the two main
                  guerrilla groups. At least 30,000 people have died in the civil war.