ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Monday, December 2, 1996               TAG: 9612020129
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL   PAGE: A-4  EDITION: METRO 
DATELINE: AGUACATAN, GUATEMALA

GUATAMALAN MILITIAS LAY DOWN THEIR GUNS

To marimba music and crowing roosters, the last of about 275,000 government-backed militiamen laid down their guns Sunday in a prelude to a permanent cease-fire in Guatemala's civil war.

In Oslo, Norway, Guatemalan government and rebel leaders will meet today and Tuesday to complete the cease-fire agreement, which is the center of a peace pact ending the Central American nation's 36-year war.

The cease-fire agreement is due to be signed Wednesday. A pact on constitutional and electoral reforms is to be signed Saturday and one on reintegrating soldiers into civilian life next Monday.

A comprehensive peace pact is scheduled to be signed in Guatemala City on Dec. 29, officially ending Latin America's longest civil war. At least 140,000 people, mostly civilians, have died in the fighting.

Some 40 peasants in dusty cowboy hats, representing about 4,700 of their comrades, marched with their aged rifles onto a soccer field in Aguacatan, 75 miles northwest of the capital, in the last two days of demobilization ceremonies.

``May these rifles never have to be used again and may you take up shovels and spades on your farms instead,'' Col. Carlos Agosto de Leon Cabrera said as he accepted the weapons.

Ceremonies in this town Sunday and another nearby today are the last of a series that began in August to disarm the army-backed militias.

- Associated Press

LENGTH: Short :   39 lines
ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO:  AP. Gugo Baltimero Herrera (left), head of the Voluntary
          Defense Committees for the area of Aguacatan, hands over his weapon 
          to Col. Carlos Agosto de Leon Cabrera.