HOUSTON PAIR CHARGED IN DOPE-FOR-GUNS BID

WASHINGTON - U.S. officials announced charges Wednesday involving alleged
plots to sell drugs to finance weapons purchases for Osama bin Laden's
al-Qaida organization and a Colombian paramilitary group.

The separate cases show the threat to national security from the "toxic
combination of drugs and terrorism," Attorney General John Ashcroft said.

One set of charges involves an alleged plot by four people, two of them
Houston-based, to trade $25 million in cocaine and cash for a huge cache of
weapons to be sent to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC,
as the 8,000-member paramilitary group is known by its initials in Spanish.

U.S. authorities said the four suspects believed they were going to trade
the money and cocaine for 9,000 AK-47s and other weapons.

In the second case, three people are charged with trying to sell heroin and
hashish to buy four shoulder-fired Stinger anti-aircraft missiles for al-Qaida.

"We have learned and we have demonstrated that drug traffickers and
terrorists work out of the same jungle, they plan in the same cave, and
they train in the same desert," said Asa Hutchinson, director of the Drug
Enforcement Agency.

In the Houston case, called "Operation White Terror," the defendants
allegedly discussed exchanging drugs and cash for weapons headed for the
AUC, Ashcroft said.

The AUC is the umbrella group for right-wing paramilitaries blamed for most
of Colombia's massacres and hundreds of assassinations.

The AUC's leader, Carlos Castano, already is charged in the United States
with exporting 17 tons of cocaine into the United States and Europe.

Authorities also seized numerous e-mails involving the negotiations,
including one from a top AUC commander saying his associates must have "a
visual inspection of the whole farm," believed to refer to the weapons,
before terms could be settled.

The charges could lead to sentences of up to life in prison, Ashcroft said.

Two suspects were identified as Uwe Jensen, 66, and Carlos Ali Romero
Varela, 43, both of Houston. There was less detail on two others: Carlos
Lopez and an individual identified only as "Commandant Emilio."

Jensen was arrested Tuesday in Houston. In a federal court appearance
Wednesday, he described himself as Danish but a U.S. citizen and was told
he'd be held at least until a hearing Friday.

The three others were arrested Tuesday in San Jose, Costa Rica, after
traveling there to finalize the deal with U.S. undercover agents. They face
extradition to the United States.

In the San Diego case, Ashcroft released an indictment against two
Pakistanis and one U.S. citizen originally from India who have been held
since Sept. 20 in Hong Kong.

They were identified as Syed Mustajab Shah and Muhammed Abid Afridi, both
of Pakistan, and Ilyas Ali of Minneapolis.

They appeared in a Hong Kong court on Tuesday to fight extradition to the
Unit ed States. Hong Kong, a former British colony now under Chinese rule,
has an extradition treaty with the United States.