(BRUSSELS) - The European Union sees no reason to take Colombia's FARC rebels off its "terror" list, the EU's foreign policy chief said Tuesday, pledging support for Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.

"The answer is no," Javier Solana told reporters in Brussels when asked about a call by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for the Colombian Marxist guerrillas to be removed from international terror lists.

"There is no reason to change our position," Solana added, after talks in Brussels with Uribe.

The European Union put FARC (the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) on its list of terrorist organisations in June 2002, a few months after former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt was seized.

Solana stressed that the Colombian president "has all our support in the battle he is waging against terrorism".

"We have total confidence in him. We must say clearly that the terrorists must free the hostages immediately without conditions," he added.

Altogether the FARC are holding at least 700 hostages.

Earlier this month Chavez urged European and Latin American governments to stop branding the FARC as terrorists, accusing them of bowing to US pressure.

Uribe was in Paris Monday, where French President Nicolas Sarkozy pressed him for action to free the hostages held by leftist rebels, including French-Colombian Betancourt who has become a cause celebre in France.

The Colombian president is under pressure from the Europeans to reach a deal with FARC, with France saying last month that it was ready to take in rebels as part of a settlement to the crisis.

Uribe praised Tuesday "Europe's resolve" in the matter, blaming the FARC for "kidnappings, torture, financing through illicit drugs and the recruitment and murder of children, pregnant women and the elderly".

The Colombian government is seeking peace but taking the group off the proscribed list would not be a useful step, he added.

Uribe said he was willing to enter peace talks and reiterated support for a "meeting zone" to be set up, away from civil populations, to consider the release of the hostages, as well as for the reactivation of the mediation role of France, Spain and Switzerland.

European Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso, who met with Uribe later in the day, welcomed the recent release of two female hostages, which he said brought "new hope".

But he called for the immediate release of remaining hostages "who are being held in inhuman conditions, many of them since several years".

Solana and Uribe also discussed moves towards an association agreement between the European Union and the Andean nations -- Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.

Solana said the European side was doing everything possible to move towards such an agreement, which would include a free trade deal.

Uribe was next due to travel on to Spain, where he will meet King Juan Carlos and Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.

On Thursday, Uribe is scheduled to visit Davos, Switzerland, for the annual international economic summit.

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