VILLA NORA, Colombia (Reuters) -- Waving automatic assault rifles and
                  banners daubed with revolutionary slogans, thousands of Colombian Marxist
                  guerrillas and peasants launched a clandestine political movement on
                  Saturday that authorities fear will become a "party for war."

                  The inauguration ceremony in southeast Colombia marked the biggest-ever public
                  display of firepower by the Soviet-inspired Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
                  (FARC) -- some 5,000 rebels equipped with machine guns and grenade launchers.

                  And for the first time in the rebel group's 36-year history, six of the FARC's
                  seven-man ruling council, including supreme commander Manuel "Sureshot"
                  Marulanda, appeared together under a banner that read "FARC -- Army of the
                  People."

                  Rebel chieftains, locked in slow-moving talks with the government to end a
                  long-running war that has cost 35,000 lives in just 10 years, urged an audience
                  of some 20,000 workers and peasants to join the broad-based organisation that
                  aims to represent the poor.

                  For now, the Bolivarian Movement for a New Colombia, named after
                  19th-century independence hero Simon Bolivar, will operate in secret.

                  Previous efforts to set up a political party in 1985 met with a backlash by
                  ultra-right death squads against its members.

                  "It is necessary to make changes in the structures of the state using the impetus
                  of the Bolivarian Movement in the cities and countryside. The FARC, the army
                  of the people, will be (the movement's) guarantee against extermination,"
                  Marulanda told the crowd.

                  There appear to be no plans for the movement, controlled by top FARC
                  ideologue Alfonso Cano, to publicly contest elections any time soon. There are
                  certainly no plans for the FARC to begin the transition from Latin America's
                  largest surviving 1960s rebel army, with an estimated 17,000 combatants and
                  control of some 40 percent of the country, to a bona fide political party.

                  According to radio conversations intercepted on Friday by the military, the new political
                  organisation appears to be an effort by the FARC to prepare civilians in rebel-held
                  territories for a period of political agitation, direct action and even people's war.

                  "This (movement) is to carry out the revolution ... . It is a party of war that will participate in
                  all forms of struggle," the FARC's top military strategist Jorge Briceno, also present at the
                  launch, said in a radio conversation intercepted on Friday by the army.

                  The launch ceremony took place in the hamlet of Villa Nora on the outskirts of San Vicente
                  del Caguan, at the heart of a Switzerland-sized area cleared of government troops
                  18 months ago to make way for peace talks.

                  Peasants travelled here on Saturday by mule, bus and boat hired by the guerrillas.
                  Some appeared to have no real idea why they had come. Others suggested they
                  had been forced.

                  "I didn't want to come but they (the guerrillas) told me there was a march," said
                  one peasant farmer who requested anonymity.

                  The slow-moving peace process was plunged into its darkest hour this week
                  when the FARC threatened to step up its campaign of extortion and kidnap
                  against the rich.

                  That threat sparked calls for President Andres Pastrana to toughen his
                  negotiating stance or break off talks altogether. In the midst of the uproar, Victor
                  Ricardo, the top government peace official, quit.

                  The FARC has so far largely dictated the pace of peace talks and has repeatedly
                  warned it would press demands for sweeping land reform and massive wealth
                  redistribution on the battlefield if negotiations fail to bear fruit.

                  Political analysts and government officials say the FARC's military power has far
                  outstripped its political support. They estimate no more than 3 percent of the
                  population back the rebels.

                  During failed peace talks in 1985, the FARC set up the Patriotic Union party
                  (UP), which gained early successes in municipal elections. But a 10-year
                  campaign by ultra-right paramilitary gangs, allegedly backed by the military ad
                  civilian power elites, wiped out some 3,500 members and destroyed it as an
                  electoral force.

                  In the light of that experience, few civilians now dare publicly admit support for
                  the FARC. But the FARC seems likely to try to carve out a constituency among
                  the 55 percent of Colombians living in poverty and record numbers of
                  unemployed.

                  "Times are hard and we have to do something," said one peasant who travelled
                  two days to get to Saturday's event. "If things get worse then we'll have to take
                  up arms too."