CRIME LINKS SHAKE UP COLOMBIAN LEADERSHIP

A Minister Resigned Monday, Days After Her Brother's Arrest For
Helping Paramilitaries

Bogota, Colombia -- Colombia is scrambling to contain international
fallout from a ballooning political scandal surrounding ties between
some of President lvaro Uribe's closest collaborators and right-wing
death squads.

Mr. Uribe's image has been tarnished by the arrest of eight lawmakers
from his governing coalition, jailed on charges they colluded with
paramilitary groups responsible for some of Colombia's most grisly
crimes. The crisis threatens to debilitate his government just as it
seeks a new $3.9 billion US aid package and ratification of a free
trade deal with Washington, and prepares for a visit by President
Bush next month.

Uribe himself appears untouched by the burgeoning scandal, but his
foreign minister, Mara Consuelo Arajo, was forced to resign on Monday
after her brother, a senator, was among five lawmakers arrested last
week for collusion with the paramilitary groups. Sen. lvaro Arajo is
charged with ordering the kidnapping of a political rival.

Ms. Arajo's resignation and replacement by recently escaped kidnap
victim Fernando Arajo . who is not related . served as temporary
damage control but the truth of the ties between paramilitaries and
politicians is only starting to emerge.

Even as the minister announced her resignation, the Supreme Court was
questioning three other senators who, along with some 40 other
politicians allied to Uribe, signed a political manifesto drafted by
the paramilitaries in 2001 in which they vowed to build a new
Colombia based on a strong state. And opposition senator Gustavo
Petro plans to schedule hearings in March into the spread of
paramilitary power in Antioquia Province, when Uribe was governor
there in the mid-1990s. He has promised to present evidence
implicating one of the president's brothers as an alleged member of a
paramilitary group.

"This [scandal] couldn't come at a worse time," for Uribe says Myles
Frechette, former US ambassador to Colombia.

Mr. Bush will be in Bogot in early March on a visit meant to
underscore Washington's support for its most important ally in South
America, a region of growing anti-US sentiment. The United States has
provided more than $4.5 billion, mostly in military aid, for Colombia
since 2000 for anti-drug and counterinsurgency operations. And the
Bush administration is now asking Congress for another $3.9 billion
over the next six years.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D) of Vermont, chairman of the Appropriations
subcommittee that oversees aid to Colombia, said US lawmakers would
bear in mind the scandal when they consider this year's budget
request for Bogot.

"As the new US Congress takes stock of this situation and the
justification for continued US outlays to Colombia, American
taxpayers deserve assurances that the Colombian government has
severed links to these terrorist groups," said Mr. Leahy in a
statement. "The Colombian government is not simply a victim of their
corrupt influences. Too often it has tolerated them, colluded with them."

With Democrats now in control of the both the House and Senate,
analysts say that Bush's request for more funding to Uribe's
government may face serious scrutiny. "Washington's relationship with
Colombia has been based on trust in Uribe. But at this point even the
Republicans are starting to lose faith in Uribe," says Arlene Tickner
an analyst of Colombian-US relations at Bogot's Los Andes University.

Still, it is unlikely that Congress will be willing to sacrifice the
US's closest South American ally. "The US continues to need Uribe to
a certain degree," says Ms. Tickner.

And Colombia certainly still needs the US. Defense Minister Juan
Manuel Santos warned that if the US pulled or severely cut its
funding, the Uribe government could be imperiled. "This is when we
need their support the most, because if all this collapses we will
return to a democracy without authority or power," says Mr. Santos.
"When we explain to them [US lawmakers] what is happening, they will
understand that this for the good [of the country], it is not bad."

Colombia's paramilitary groups were originally formed by wealthy
cattle ranchers, business owners, and drug mafias in the 1980s to
fight off extortion and kidnapping by leftist guerrillas. The
paramilitaries later turned into powerful armies heavily involved in
drug trafficking and extortion themselves, who used their power to
control local politics and politicians and even infiltrated the
prosecutor's office and courts.

The former chiefs of the militia groups, which has demobilized some
31,000 troops in the past three years, are currently being prosecuted
for their crimes under a controversial law that grants them reduced
prison sentences of up to eight years for confessing.

Despite the scandal, Uribe maintains high approval ratings
domestically. A recent Gallup poll showed that 73 percent of
Colombians approve of their president.