The World - News from Oct. 8, 1989

Carlos Pizarro, leader of Colombia’s leftist M-19 guerrillas and once its most-wanted criminal, is to be the group’s presidential candidate in next year’s elections. Pizarro, 38, was nominated to represent the group in the May presidential vote, M-19 said in a statement from its mountain headquarters of Santo Domingo, an Andean village in southwestern Colombia. M-19 has agreed to lay down its arms and form a political party, two of the steps suggested in a peace accord signed with the government. The group has operated underground following its failed takeover of Bogota’s Palace of Justice in November, 1985, in which 95 people, including 11 Supreme Court justices, were killed.