Friday December 29 7:50 PM ET

Colombia Congressman Assassinated, FARC Blamed

By Jude Webber

BOGOTA (Reuters) - The president of the peace commission of Colombia's lower house of Congress and six other people were killed on Friday in an apparent ambush that police blamed on the country's biggest rebel group, the FARC.

The murder -- the most high profile in more than a year in Colombia's four-decades-old conflict -- was expected to deal a blow to the stuttering peace process under way with the Marxist guerrilla group, analysts said.

Diego Turbay, 47, a member of the opposition Liberal party, his mother, a friend and four police officers and bodyguards were killed as they were traveling to the swearing-in of a local mayor in a southern jungle area where attacks by guerrillas and far-right paramilitary death squads are frequent, authorities said.

``This was an attack by the FARC,'' the deputy commander of Colombia's police force, Alfredo Salgado, told reporters. The army was pursuing the alleged attackers, officials said.

Turbay and his companions were traveling in a green armored vehicle from the town of Florencia, capital of the department of Caqueta, to the village of Puerto Rico on Friday morning.

``They got them out of the car, made them lie face down on the ground and delivered a 'coup de grace' in the head,'' journalist Luis Peralta, who witnessed the attack, told local radio station Radionet.

Private Caracol television said the victims were shot with rifles and pistols and the car was riddled with bullet holes. The bodies were expected to be brought to Bogota on Saturday.

Turbay headed the peace commission in the Chamber of Representatives that seeks to foster dialogue between the government and rebels, working in parallel to a government department that conducts actual peace negotiations.

Turbay's brother was taken hostage by the FARC in 1996 and later drowned whenthe rebel group was transporting him across a flooded river.

The latest attack happened near the enclave controlled by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which has served as the venue for two years of peace talks many Colombians believe have yet to bear fruit.

The rebels broke off the talks last month, demanding a government crackdown on the paramilitaries.

The FARC must decide whether to resume talks by Jan. 31 or see security forces allowed back into their Switzerland-sized zone. As a sweetener to kick-start the talks, the government has dangled the offer of a ``humanitarian exchange'' of sick prisoners that the FARC hopes can happen early next month.

``Martyr For Peace''

Congress President Mario Uribe lamented the ``tragic news.''

``Another martyr of peace has just fallen in Colombia,'' he told Radionet.

``The government must rethink the way it is conducting the peace process. ... This is the proof that even those working for peace are not safe from the unbridled violence ... of those who are showing the whole country with bloody attacks that they don't want a peace process,'' Uribe said.

Peralta said FARC guerrillas were lying in wait for the car at a crossroads near a bridge. They stopped the car, puncturing its tires, and forced the occupants to get out, Peralta added.

Latin America's longest-running conflict involves the FARC, the smaller leftist National Liberation Army (ELN) and paramilitaries and has claimed 35,000 civilian lives in the past decade alone.

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