(Adds details on march, arrival in Bogota plaza) By Patrick Markey BOGOTA, Aug 1 (Reuters) - The Colombian father of a soldier kidnapped by rebels a decade ago trudged into Bogota on Wednesday to meet with President Alvaro Uribe after seven weeks trekking across the country to protest the plight of hostages. The march by Gustavo Moncayo, a teacher whose son was captured in a 1997 rebel attack, has generated a huge surge of sympathy for long-held hostages, including a French-Colombian politician and three Americans contractors. Thousands of flag-waving supporters crowded the streets and joined the march as Moncayo, his family and relatives of other kidnap victims jostled into the main city center plaza outside the presidential palace, where he plans to camp out to press for the release of rebel-held hostages. But demands that Uribe and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, hold talks for an accord to free kidnapping victims appeared unlikely to break a deadlock between the president and Latin America's oldest insurgency. "What we want is a humanitarian accord ... on one side, the FARC, and the other President Uribe," Moncayo told crowds at the end of his more than 500-mile (800-km) hike from a southern state bordering Ecuador. Uribe, popular for his U.S.-backed security campaign, told Moncayo in a conversation broadcast on local radio he would meet him on Thursday. Colombia's 4-decade-old conflict has ebbed under Uribe, but the FARC is still fighting, mainly in rural areas, where it is engaged in the country's huge trade to smuggle cocaine to the United States and Europe. But the kidnap issue is a tough one for Uribe, especially after the government blamed the FARC for killing 11 lawmakers in June more than five years after they were taken hostage. Families want him to halt military rescues and hold talks. Among the hostages are Ingrid Betancourt, who was kidnapped in 2002 while campaigning for the presidency and three U.S. contract workers captured the following year when their aircraft crashed on an anti-drug mission. The FARC, which began as a peasant army fighting for social justice, is demanding Uribe pull troops back from an area the size of New York City to create a safe haven as a condition for any hostage talks. Uribe recently released a top jailed rebel to help efforts by France, Spain and Switzerland to reach a hostage deal, but he refuses to yield to a demilitarized zone, which he says will allow rebels to regroup.
