BOGOTA, Colombia – Colombia will unilaterally release dozens of jailed rebels who agree to demobilize and work for peace, President Alvaro Uribe said Saturday, laying out conditions of a daring proposal to pressure the guerrillas into freeing hostages.

Rebels who agree to the deal must also promise not to return to the ranks of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC, and to accept the supervision of either the Catholic Church or a foreign government, Uribe said.

It was unclear how many of the roughly 500 FARC prisoners would be eligible or whether the rebels would respond in kind to the move.

Uribe surprised and baffled Colombia on Friday when he announced that the release had to come before June 7, for “reasons of state.”

He did not offer an explanation for the deadline. That same day Uribe is due in Washington for the second time in as many months to lobby for congressional approval of a free trade agreement with the United States that has become embroiled over labor and human rights concerns.

“I have a commitment, a reason of state to have the FARC issue ready before June 7,” Uribe said in a radio interview on Friday.

With the release of the prisoners, Uribe hopes to maneuver the FARC into freeing 56 high-profile hostages, including three American defense contractors and former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt. Local and federal politicians as well as army and police officers are also being held by the FARC as “swappable” prisoners.

For years, the FARC has dangled the idea of a humanitarian exchange – hostages for FARC prisoners – but has demanded a demilitarized zone to negotiate the trade with the government. Although the Uribe administration last year agreed to the zone with certain conditions, the plan was nixed after a car bomb exploded at a military college in Bogota last fall

“I think it’s more important to release people than to give a demilitarized zone to the terrorists,” Uribe said in a speech Friday.

“This is a bold move by the government to pressure (the FARC) into releasing the hostages,” said security analyst Alfredo Rangel. “Now the international and domestic pressure with respect to a prisoner swap will be on the FARC, not the government.”

Critics both within Colombia and internationally have accused the government of not being flexible enough to negotiate the swap with the FARC. Among the most vocal critics are the French, since Betancourt holds dual French and Colombian citizenship. The FARC on Thursday asked French president Nicolas Sarkozy to use his “good offices” to press for a humanitarian accord.

The release of the FARC prisoners goes hand in hand with a proposal by Uribe to also free politicians found to have links with any of Colombia’s rightwing paramilitary groups in exchange for telling the truth.

Fourteen senators and congressmen, as well as dozens of local and regional politicians, businessmen and ranchers are behind bars on charges they colluded with paramilitary forces that controlled huge swathes of Colombia before agreeing to demobilize 31,000 fighters.

Links between Colombia’s military forces and the paramilitary groups has been well-documented by local and international human rights groups but details of the intricate web of collaboration between the illegal groups and politicians began being revealed last fall with the discovery of a paramilitary leader’s computer files that detailed payments and arrangements with leading political figures on the Caribbean coast.

Now the paramilitary leaders have begun to implicate politicians as well. Nearly 60 of the top paramilitary leaders are in jail awaiting prosecution under a law that grants them reduced sentences of up to eight years in exchange for revealing their crimes and compensating their victims. In a deposition earlier this month, top militia leader Salvatore Mancuso implicated the vice president and the defense minister, saying they had met with him in the 1990s before either had assumed their current posts. Both acknowledged the meeting but denied any conspiracy.