By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Staff Writer

BOGOTA, Colombia, Dec. 29 -- -An influential congressman involved in Colombia's peace process was assassinated on a jungle road today apparently by leftist
guerrillas, who also killed the legislator's mother, four bodyguards and a friend traveling with them.

The killing of Diego Turbay, president of the peace commission in Colombia's lower house, is a stunning blow to President Andres Pastrana's stalled efforts at
reaching a peace accord with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. After two years, talks remain frozen in the wake of the decision by FARC, as
Colombia's largest rebel group is known, to end negotiations last month. The group has shown few signs of returning to the table.

A witness said FARC soldiers appeared to be waiting for the car carrying Turbay, a member of the opposition Liberal Party, to the inauguration of a mayor in the
southern state of Caqueta early today. The armored car was stopped at a crossroads between the city of Florencia and the sprawling jungle safe haven the FARC
has used as a military staging ground since the area was designated two years ago as a venue for peace talks.

After puncturing the tires and ordering the passengers to lie facedown on the roadside, guerrilla troops shot each person in the head.

"Another martyr of peace has just fallen in Colombia," Mario Uribe, president of Colombia's Congress, told a local radio station. "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."

Turbay, 47, was among the most knowledgeable legislators involved in the complicated peace negotiations. As head of the Chamber of Representatives' peace
commission, he was charged with helping government negotiators seek an end to a nearly four-decade-old civil war that has intensified over the past year. Right-wing
paramilitary forces tried unsuccessfully earlier this month to assassinate a labor leader who was helping the government reach a peace accord with a smaller leftist
rebel group.

Turbay's murder comes just over a month before Pastrana must decide whether to continue the FARC safe haven or send in government security forces to take it
back. Turbay's death will likely increase pressure on Pastrana to let the zone lapse at the end of January, and with it the peace process. Uribe said the killing showed
that the FARC does not "want a peace process."

Pastrana, however, defended the process in a New Year's message this evening.

"I've been staking my all, and I will continue to stake my all, on a political solution to the conflict," he said. "We've made more progress than ever."

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