UPDATE 1-Venezuela to offer plan, Uribe wants rebel fight

(For coverage of Venezuela-Colombia dispute [ID:nANDEAN])

* Venezuela to present proposal for peace plan on Thursday

* Colombia's Uribe says rebels seek talks to regroup

* Colombia's new president is main hope for improved ties (Recasts with Uribe comment)

By Luis Andres Henao

BUENOS AIRES, July 27 (Reuters) - Venezuela will present a peace plan this week aimed at ending a bitter dispute with Colombia, but its Andean neighbor belittled on Tuesday any suggestion of talks with the leftist rebels at the heart of the crisis.

Venezuela's leftist president, Hugo Chavez, abruptly cut ties with Bogota last week after Colombia accused his country of sheltering guerrillas, sharply raising tensions and causing a diplomatic headache for the ideologically divided region.

Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro, on a rapid Latin American tour to drum up support for Venezuela's position, said in Buenos Aires that a "concrete proposal" would be presented to the Unasur grouping of 12 South American states at an emergency meeting in the Ecuadorean capital Quito on Thursday.

Maduro told reporters after meeting Argentine President Cristina Fernandez on Tuesday that Venezuela's proposal would contain the "methodology" for a peace plan, apparently with the broad aim of ending Colombia's decades-long civil war.

"Venezuela ... is going with a proposed peace plan. We have to solve the underlying problem, which is the war in Colombia," Maduro said.

But Colombian President Alvaro Uribe said his country should not be "tricked" by talk of peace, suggesting Maduro's proposal may not prosper.

"When the terrorist snake feels it is being suffocated, then it asks for peace processes, to take oxygen and come back to poison again," the outgoing president said at a farewell event at the Defense Ministry in Bogota.

A tough conservative, Uribe leaves office on Aug. 7, having driven the once-mighty Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, into remote jungle and mountain hide-outs, including, he says, camps in Venezuela.

Maduro has met leaders including Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva this week and said he would talk with the presidents of Chile, Peru and Bolivia in the coming days.

Regional heavyweight Brazil has offered to mediate the dispute and Lula is due to meet Chavez in Caracas next week before heading to the inauguration of Colombian President-elect Juan Manuel Santos.

Analysts said the Unasur summit was unlikely to risk pre-empting the new president, who is seen as more keen on renewing economic ties with Colombia than Uribe.

Santos, who shares Uribe's conservative views, is also touring Latin America to meet leaders ahead of his inauguration but has declined to speak publicly about the dispute.

COLOMBIA WANTS ACTION

Last week Colombia presented evidence it said showed Venezuela is allowing FARC guerrillas to operate inside its borders. It says Venezuela must now investigate the alleged camps. Washington has repeated that request.

Former soldier Chavez has dismissed Colombia's charges as a lie that could be a pretext for a U.S.-backed invasion of his country, now the standard-bearer for socialism in the region.

Venezuela says it is a victim of Colombia's failure to control the decades-old leftist insurgency.

Critics say Chavez is using the dispute as a distraction from the OPEC nation's severe economic problems and a fall in his popularity ahead of Sept. 26 legislative elections.

Colombia's war with the FARC spilled into the region in 2008 when the country launched an air strike on a rebel camp in Ecuador, souring its ties with much of the region.

Its relations with Venezuela plummeted further last year when Chavez partially froze trade ties worth $7 billion a year to protest a deal allowing U.S. forces to use Colombian bases.

While analysts say an armed conflict seems unlikely, there is a chance of border skirmishes that could escalate.

Santos is expected to usher in a more conciliatory approach that may help improve ties in the near term.

But the former defense minister will have to confront the issue of suspected FARC camps in Venezuela in order to make progress in ending the long-running war, said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington.

"The question is: is there a possibility of seeking Venezuelan cooperation with more sophisticated diplomacy. Is there an alternative approach," he said. (Additional reporting by Diego Ore in Caracas and Nelson Bocanegra in Bogota; writing by Stuart Grudgings; editing by Frank Jack Daniel)