A former Colombian president, Julio Cesar Turbay, who negotiated the release in 1980 of dozens of diplomats held hostage by leftist rebels for 61 days, died Tuesday in Bogata. He was 89.

Turbay, who led the nation from 1978 to 1982, died of heart failure.

In the notorious terrorist attack of Feb. 27, 1980, fighters from the M-19 guerrilla group took 50 officials, including 16 ambassadors and the papal delegate, hostage at the Dominican ambassador’s home in a cunning raid.

The rebels in track suits, posing as soccer players in front of the residence, kicked a ball over the wall. Pretending to retrieve it, they killed a surprised guard and forced their way into the building. A two-hour shootout left one guerrilla dead and two soldiers wounded.

Sixty-one days later, the rebels were allowed to fly to Cuba with a $1 million ransom in a deal negotiated by Turbay.

Authorities had turned down demands that they release jailed rebels and pay $50 million.

“His calm and measured handling of one of the most difficult politico military acts that Colombia faced at the time was admirable,” Rosemberg Pabon, the hostage-takers’ leader, later recalled after he was granted amnesty when the M-19 laid down its arms in 1990.

In 1991, Turbay saw his journalist daughter, Diana, abducted by gunmen working for drug kingpin Pablo Escobar.

She was later killed during a botched rescue attempt.

“He was the great conciliator,” Belisario Betancourt, another former Colombian president, recalled of his deceased colleague Tuesday.