Thousands Pay Last Respects to Slain Candidate : Colombia: Pizarro is honored as a champion of peace. The leftist M-19 group names his

Tens of thousands of mourners crowded rain-drenched Bogota streets Saturday for a funeral march honoring assassinated presidential candidate Carlos Pizarro Leongomez, a guerrilla chieftain who became a champion of peace.

Pizarro’s leftist political movement, the Democratic Alliance M-19, announced that it will continue its campaign for May 27 presidential elections with another former guerrilla as its candidate.

A young man firing a machine pistol killed Pizarro, 38, aboard an airborne jetliner Thursday. The assassination was the latest killing in a long wave of terrorist violence that has engulfed Colombia.

Cocaine traffickers based in the city of Medellin have carried out many killings and bombings, while right-wing death squads and leftist terrorists have been blamed for others.

Col. Oscar Pelaez, chief of judicial police, identified Pizarro’s assassin as Gerardo Gutierrez Uribe, 20, who had worked for a billiards chalk factory near Medellin. Pelaez said the factory was linked to the Medellin cartel, headed by Pablo Escobar Gavira, Colombia’s most notorious drug lord.

“The one responsible for the death of Carlos Pizarro Leongomez has a name: Pablo Escobar Gavira,” Pelaez told reporters. A statement issued Friday by anonymous traffickers, believed to include Escobar, denied any responsibility for the assassination.

Police also have blamed Escobar for the assassinations of presidential candidates Luis Carlos Galan in August and Bernardo Jaramillo in March. Investigative documents in court files, however, have not implicated Escobar in any of the killings, the newspaper El Espectador reported Saturday.

Roman Catholic Bishop Guillermo Vega, chairman of the church’s Justice and Peace Commission, officiated at Saturday’s funeral Mass for Pizarro. “Nobody spoke against violence as he did in recent days,” the bishop said.

As Pizarro’s coffin emerged from the cathedral on Bogota’s central Plaza Bolivar, a waiting crowd clapped and began chanting, “The government killed him.” The chant echoed widespread outrage over the government’s failure to prevent terrorist attacks.

But a member of the M-19 who was helping with crowd control said the chant did not reflect the political movement’s official position. “We make no accusations,” he said.

Draped with a red, yellow and blue Colombian flag, the coffin was placed atop a black hearse parked beside the empty site once occupied by Colombia’s Palace of Justice. About 40 M-19 guerrillas took over the judicial center in November, 1985, and all were killed in an army counterattack.

Eleven Supreme Court justices and about 50 other people also died in the besieged building, which was gutted by fire.

Under heavy rain at midday Saturday, Pizarro’s funeral hearse moved slowly through crowded streets, followed by a long procession of marchers. Radio RCN estimated the total number of mourners on the streets at 30,000.

The procession, which took five hours to reach the National Cemetery where Pizarro’s body was buried, stopped at the historic Quinta Bolivar, an estate used by South American independence hero Simon Bolivar. Guerrillas stole Bolivar’s sword from the estate’s museum in 1974 to announce the M-19’s formation.

M-19 stands for April 19 Movement. That is the date of allegedly fraudulent presidential elections in 1970.

At the estate Saturday, the M-19 proclaimed former guerrilla Antonio Navarro Wolf as Pizarro’s successor in the presidential campaign. “I accept so that there may be peace in Colombia,” said Navarro, who lost a leg in a June, 1985, grenade attack against him at a restaurant in the city of Cali.

At that time, Navarro was the M-19’s chief negotiator in peace talks with the government. The M-19 withdrew from the talks shortly after the attack.

Pizarro led the guerrilla movement into new peace talks last year that culminated when the rebels gave up their arms and entered the political arena in March. In recent opinion surveys, Pizarro was favored by about 5% of voters polled.

Pizarro’s widow, Laura, said at graveside services Saturday that he was brave in battle and equally brave in making peace.

“Let us not let all his efforts be in vain,” she said. “Let us not lose hope, and let us continue opening paths to peace for our country.”