BY KEVIN G. HALL
 Herald World Staff

 BOGOTA -- A key figure in Colombia's peace efforts said Saturday he was fleeing the country after receiving death threats from a right-wing paramilitary group.

 The announcement came only hours after a truce was reached between the government and the country's largest Marxist guerrilla group to salvage a precarious peace process.

 ``I have my heart in my throat, it hurts me to leave the country,'' Alberto Pinzon, a government representative on a four-member commission seeking a solution to
 Colombia's 37-year old civil war, told a local radio station, saying he would go first to Cuba, then seek asylum in Venezuela. He said the death threat had come over the Internet from the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, and that he felt the government could not adequately protect him.

 Pinzon's decision demonstrated the precarious nature of the ongoing peace process in war-torn Colombia, the world's largest producer of cocaine, whose sales help arm both Marxist guerrillas and right-wing death squads.

 With an eye to stemming the flow of cocaine, the U.S. government's Plan Colombia has earmarked $1.3 billion in military aid in an effort to equip and train Colombia's military.

 But as the government tries to end the decades-old Marxist insurgency, it is coming under fire from right-wing paramilitary groups. At the same time the U.S.-supported Colombian military is being criticized for alleged links between some military units and paramilitary groups.

 Pinzon's announced self-exile deflated a brief moment of euphoria late Friday when it was announced that a truce had been reached between the government and the
 Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

 As part of the truce, the government and FARC agreed to immediately begin studying a cease-fire proposal offered by the four-member Commission of Notables -- among them Pinzon -- that is spearheading the peace efforts.

 As part of the deal, the FARC offered to end so-called ``miracle fishing,'' the random kidnapping of thousands of citizens along national highways to hold for ransoms.

 "For them to recognize specific issues like that is significant,'' said Daniel Garcia Pena, Colombia's peace commissioner from 1995 to 1998.

 Of equal significance, said Garcia, was acceptance by the government of the panel's call to address the surge of right-wing paramilitary organizations and to consider a national constituent assembly to discuss social issues -- a key demand of leftist rebels.

 The nine-point accord reached late Friday also commits the FARC to allow political campaigning in a Switzerland-sized swath of territory it controls.

 And it invites candidates in May's presidential election to participate in the peace process by offering their own suggestions for a solution.

 In hopes of generating good faith in peace talks, President Andrés Pastrana had unilaterally treated the FARC-held territory as a demilitarized zone.

                                    © 2001