By Helen Murphy BOGOTA (Reuters) - Waving balloons and dressed in white, tens of thousands of Colombians marched in Bogota and across the nation on Tuesday in a polarizing gathering for peace that critics slam as a show of support for Marxist FARC rebels. Throngs of people chanting "We want peace" advanced toward the capital's main square, Plaza Bolivar, a few blocks from where former presidential candidate Jorge Eliecer Gaitan was assassinated on April 9, 65 years ago.

BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombian rebel leader Pablo Catatumbo has joined the team of FARC negotiators hammering out a peace deal in Havana, a move that could help the Marxist group garner more support from low-ranking guerrillas to end the country's five-decade conflict. Catatumbo, who is sought by the United States for drug trafficking, went to Havana with other members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, to reinforce the negotiating team, the rebel group said in a statement on Sunday.

Bogota, Apr 1 (EFE).- Colombia's FARC rebels blasted authorities on Monday for seeking to implicate the guerrillas in drug trafficking. "We of the FARC are revolutionaries, not drug traffickers," the high command of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia's Western Bloc said in a statement posted on the Internet.

Bogota, Mar 17 (EFE).- Army troops destroyed "the largest drug storage center" operated by the FARC guerrilla group in southwestern Colombia and seized four tons of cocaine bound for Central America and the United States, special counternarcotics brigade commander Col. Jorge Mora told Efe. The anti-drug operation was conducted last Tuesday in a remote area outside Zanjal, a hamlet in Cauca province, Mora said. Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, guerrillas attacked soldiers from the special brigade outside the complex, Mora told Efe by telephone.