This Christmas brings good news for thousands of children in Colombia - a country where political violence every week forces hundreds of families to flee their homes for the safety of refugee camps and many more live in constant fear. Large numbers of young people are forced to take part in the fighting. But now the government is negotiating with guerrillas and with right-wing irregulars to stop recruiting children and to release from their ranks everyone under 18. From Bogota, Timothy Ross, reports:

The first steps forward in getting as many as 15,000 children out of the firing line here in Colombia will be taken early in the New Year.

Delegates from the government, the communist rebels and the right-wing paramilitary forces have been meeting secretly to work out an agreement for the demobilisation of fighters as young as nine and ten - boys and girls who instead of being in school playing games and enjoying their childhood, have learned to kill.

In the days just before Christmas, leaders of the extreme left National Liberation Army announced they were releasing a girl aged 17 and an 11-year old boy captured from the anti-communist paramilitary forces.

Usually such prisoners are forced to change sides or else are killed.

But the guerrillas say this time it is a goodwill gesture to show they are ready to obey international laws against involving children in armed conflict.

Two thousand youngsters are estimated to be in the rebel ranks and it is hoped that within nine months all will be civilians again.

There are also about 12,000 adolescent boys in the government forces.

The Defence Ministry has agreed that all will be removed from the danger zones and in future no one under 18 will be recruited.

Commanders of the illegal paramilitaries at first claimed not to have any children under arms, but there are dozens of reports that they have recruited young people by force and they too now seem ready to release their child soldiers.

The government's family welfare institute is preparing a rehabilitation programme with child psychologists and therapists to help repair the emotional damage done by being swept up so young into the war.

Turing kids into killers only makes sure the conflict is continued.