LIMA, Peru (Reuters) -- Leading Peruvian politicians criticized President Alejandro Toledo on Saturday for failing to condemn the armed forces for their role in two decades of political violence that may have killed 70,000 people.

Toledo said on Friday night that Peru's military committed "painful excesses" combating terrorism between 1980 and 2000. The president was reacting to a report issued in August estimating 69,280 people may have died or disappeared during that time.

"I have always maintained there was the practice of a systematic violation of human rights abuses" on the part of the military, Henry Pease, president of Congress and a member of Toledo's own political party, told RPP radio. And left-wing lawmaker Javier Diez Canseco told Reuters: "Guilty members of the armed forces should be tried before a civil court for their acts."

The report issued by a government-appointed Truth and Reconciliation Commission identified 23,900 dead during parallel wars waged by two rival terrorist groups seeking to impose communist rule.

After two years of investigation, the commission said 54 percent of the identified dead were killed by the Shining Path guerrillas and 30 percent by security forces. The remainder of the identified dead, or about 3,800, were presumed to have died at the hands of civilian defense groups or the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) guerrillas. The bodies of the missing have not been found and they are presumed dead." --- Look for the Responsible ---

"We are not blaming the armed forces as an institution, but we are saying that we must look for those responsible," Rolando Ames, a member of the truth commission, told Reuters.

The August report recommended compensation be paid to victims and their families. Toledo responded on Friday pledging reparations of 2,845 million soles ($820 million). But former president Alan Garcia, who's 1985-1990 government saw some of the worst terror attacks by the guerrillas, said critics of the military "ignored that the armed forces fulfilled their role as defenders of society."

"There were violations ... abuses. But from there to say the military carried out a systematic violation (of rights abuses) is an excessive statement," Garcia, now leader of the opposition, told CPN radio.

In one of Latin America's bloodiest insurgencies, the MRTA and the Shining Path guerrillas sowed terror in Peru, decimating mostly Quechua-speaking indigenous peoples in remote regions of this poor Andean nation.

Shining Path, which took up arms in 1980, is still on Washington's list of terrorist groups. Although its attacks died down after the 1992 capture of leader Abimael Guzman, a few hundred guerrillas are still at large.