*PUERTO ASIS Colombia (Reuters) - Two camouflaged military helicopters dot the sky as Silvio Mora sweeps up remains of a freshly killed chicken at his backyard slaughter house in Colombia's southern conflict zone of Putumayo.
"At least peace may end that," he says, pointing toward the troop carriers as vultures pick at the bloody slop he brushed into the jungle behind his concrete shack. "Look at how we live. The war has brought only misery, we need peace talks to work."
Mora, 45, turned to subsistence farming in the regional capital Puerto Asis after his 20 hectares (49 acres) of coca were fumigated during former President Alvaro Uribe's hardline rule to stop Marxist rebels using the crop to produce cocaine.
The father-of-four is among hundreds of thousands of Colombians in frontline areas who want President Juan Manuel Santos re-elected on Sunday so he can continue negotiating an end to five decades of war with guerrilla leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
Yet many other voters, living in once-violent regions that were pacified during Uribe's U.S.-backed military offensives against the FARC, oppose the negotiations with rebel leaders and instead support Uribe's candidate, right-wing opposition leader Oscar Ivan Zuluaga.
Polls show the men neck-and-neck ahead of the runoff vote in Colombia's closest presidential race for two decades.
Zuluaga says any peace deal must include prison terms for rebel leaders and a ban on entering politics. That could sink the talks and force an escalation of the military solution that Uribe favours.
Santos would allow the rebels into politics and likely impose alternative sentences like community service.
The two visions of how to end the war have split Colombia and turned the election on Sunday into a choice between making concessions to end Latin America's longest-running insurgency or seeking the rebels' surrender, on or off the battlefield.
Voting patterns in the first round of the election last month showed strong support for center-right Santos in coastal and border areas where the conflict continues, like Putumayo, which once produced most of Colombia's illegal coca leaves.
Zuluaga won in provinces that benefited from Uribe's relentless military push during his 2002-2010 rule, like rice-growing central Tolima and cattle-ranching Meta, where residents live in relative peace and their economies have improved.
"Santos hasn't been the best president, but he's far less bloodthirsty than Uribe and that's who we will elect if Zuluaga wins," says Alfonso Riascos, 82, sitting on his ramshackle porch down the road from Mora's farm.
Many in Putumayo struggle to recall Zuluaga's name and refer to Uribe when talking of the presidential hopeful. Some worry right-wing paramilitary death squads will re-emerge if Zuluaga wins, peace talks fade and the FARC steps up its attacks.
Uribe negotiated a deal with paramilitaries in 2006 that gave them soft sentences for serious crimes as long as they confessed and repaid their victims. The effort was broadly seen as a failure as many formed new crime gangs.
TOO MANY CONCESSIONS
In a pacified mountainous zone of central Colombia, villagers in Fomeque accuse Santos of giving the rebels an easy ride and squandering Uribe's security gains.
Fomeque was once overrun by rebels smuggling arms and hostages through canyons and planning attacks on nearby Bogota.
Uribe, whose father was killed in a FARC kidnapping, put the rebels onto the back foot and the local economy boomed. But residents feel they are regrouping and could menace again.
"It's clear to us, in the eight years of Uribe, we were safer, no doubt. Santos has let security slide and now we are seeing the FARC again," says Ernesto Zabogal, 50, a farmer debating politics with friends in Fomeque's central square.
"We see them more and more on patrol in the mountains and extortion has started again," adds Alvaro Rojas, 57.
Down the road in Choachi, residents fear a Santos win may mean demobilized FARC rebels morph into crime gangs just as the paramilitaries did.
Choachi suffered many rebel attacks before Uribe's troops pushed them out. Now tourists from Bogota flock to its springs and waterfalls, pouring money into local businesses and even buying property.
"We are packed. We have to buy dozens more pigs than before and now we have six people working instead of two a decade ago," says Evelia Amortegui, 54, whose family-run restaurant opened 30 years ago. "With Zuluaga, we are asking for Uribe back."
Trying to win over waverers in the final stretch, Zuluaga has slightly softened his previously militant line against the peace talks, while Santos has raised the specter of more war if he does not win a second term.
In one new campaign spot, the president asks a mother if she is willing to send her son to war. She replies no, to which the president cries over-and-over "No more war!"
But he has struggled to persuade residents of more peaceful areas there is much to be gained from negotiating with the FARC.
In Bogota and Medellin, Zuluaga had the edge in the first round, largely because voters in big cities feel far removed from a war playing out in rural areas.
"For people in cities, it's like the conflict in Crimea or the Ukraine, something they see on TV," said Alejo Vargas, political scientist at the National University of Colombia.
(Additional reporting by Julia Symmes Cobb in Bogota; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Kieran Murray)
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HAVANA/BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombia's government and FARC rebels on Friday reached an agreement to eliminate the illegal drugs trade, the third item on a five-point agenda in peace talks to end a half-century of war, hours after the Marxist group called a week-long ceasefire.
The advance in talks nine days ahead of the first round of voting in the presidential election is likely to give President Juan Manuel Santos a boost to his re-election bid. The race is shaping up to be the tightest in two decades.
Discussions on how to eliminate the production of cocaine from Colombia were closed, a source from Colombia's Office of High Commissioner for Peace told Reuters on condition of anonymity. Sergio Jaramillo, who heads the office, serves as a government negotiator at the peace talks in Havana.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) announced it would stop all attacks from May 20 to May 28, a period that includes the May 25 election. The second biggest rebel group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), also said it would call a ceasefire during the period.
Presidential and local elections have historically been marred by leftist rebel attacks nationwide as the groups seek to intimidate and influence voters. The government usually sends thousands of additional troops to patrol during the period.
"We are ordering all of our units to cease any offensive military action against the armed forces or the economic infrastructure as of 0000 hours on Tuesday, May 20, until 2400 hours on Wednesday, May 28," Pablo Catabumbo, a FARC leader, told reporters in Havana.
Santos, who until this week was the frontrunner, faces a tough election battle with right-wing rival Oscar Ivan Zuluaga, who is closing the gap in the first round and seen beating the incumbent in a June 15 runoff, according to two recent surveys.
PEACE WITH ELN?
Positive developments in the talks could affect the election's outcome, as many voters may perceive there is a spirit of cooperation at the negotiating table and that progress is being made under Santos' leadership.
Santos, a centre-right politician who succeeded former President Alvaro Uribe, has sought to sell the idea that without his re-election, peace talks could collapse and Colombia would remain at war indefinitely.
The last time an election appeared to be so close was in 1994 when Liberal candidate Ernesto Samper beat Andres Pastrana of the Conservative Party.
Zuluaga, a key Uribe ally, has strongly condemned the current negotiations and promised to suspend them until the rebels call a unilateral ceasefire and accept jail time.
FARC and government negotiators have been engaged in talks since November 2012 to find a peaceful end to a war that has killed more than 200,000 people.
With the deal on the drugs trade, the two sides have now reached accord on three items. Agricultural reform and the rebels' participation in politics were agreed last year, while reparations for war victims and the mechanics of ending the conflict remain the key outstanding issues.
The ELN is not participating in the talks but many believe Santos will announce peace talks with the group before the second round.
(Reporting by Luis Jaime Acosta, Helen Murphy and Nelson Acosta; Editing by Daniel Trotta, W Simon, Bernadette Baum, Andrew Hay and Paul Simao)
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