Colombia's right-wing paramilitary groups threatened Sunday to end peace talks because of a proposed law that would imprison militiamen for atrocities and crimes — putting a two-year negotiation effort at risk.

The bill would provide amnesty to the vast majority of the fighters outlawed United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, but would force demobilizing members who have committed atrocities to spend five to eight years in prison.

A key mediator in the talks between the outlawed United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, said the talks are likely to be broken off if the bill remains unchanged.

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe said he wants Congress to approve the bill by July.

More than 4,000 members of the 20,000-strong AUC have disarmed in the past six months in anticipation of the bill spelling out terms for giving up their arms. But the demobilization stalled when the bill was introduced two months ago.

Paramilitary spokesman Ernesto Baez said it makes no sense for illegal fighters to disarm only to be sent to prison for up to eight years.

"If we have to decide to head back to the mountains, the first ones to feel sorry about this decision will be us, the AUC," Baez said Sunday, one day after his group met with the government's peace commissioner in northwest Colombia.

Julio Cesar Vidal, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Monteria and a key mediator, said the talks could be broken off if the bill remains unchanged.

While the AUC says the bill is too harsh, human rights groups and the international community have generally condemned the bill as too soft because they say it will not require paramilitary chiefs to forfeit riches gained from drug trafficking.

Paramilitary gunmen have massacred hundreds of peasants accused of supporting the leftist guerillas, sometimes carving them up with chain saws or bashing in their heads with rocks to spread terror in the countryside. The leftist rebels, who have refused to declare a cease-fire and enter into peace talks, have also committed widespread abuses.

The FARC, Colombia's main rebel group, and a smaller leftist group have been fighting the Colombian government for 40 years in a war that involves the right-wing militias. The conflict claims more than 3,000 lives each year.

In a separate development, five Colombian human rights workers kidnapped late last month by Marxist guerrillas in the jungles near the Panama border have been released unharmed, Colombia's military said Sunday.

The workers for the Inter-Church Justice and Peace Commission were handed over to villagers Friday close to where they were abducted March 31 in the Jiguiamiando River basin, 240 miles northwest of Bogota, said Sgt. Jose Betancur of Colombia's 17th Brigade.

The area has come under intense fighting as leftist rebels and right-wing paramilitary groups battle for control. The sparsely populated region contains strategic routes for smuggling drugs and weapons.

More than 2,000 villagers in several hamlets in the area have fled their homes recently because of the fighting, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees said last week.

(Chinadaily.com via agencies April 11, 2005)