COLOMBIA PRESIDENT'S CALLS FOR ORDER TESTED AFTER CHIEF'S KILLING

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP)- The government offered a $260,000 reward Friday for
the capture of the killers of a Colombian police commander, whose
assassination challenged President Alvaro Uribe's attempts to bring order
to this country.

Fernando Mancilla, 45, was shot and killed Thursday morning by a pair of
motorcycle-riding gunmen in Medellin, hours before he was to be formally
named head of Colombia's secret police for the western province of Antioquia.

On Thursday evening, a former state magistrate and prosecutor was shot to
death in Bogota, the capital.

Mr. Mancilla's killing bore the hallmarks of the Medellin cocaine cartel,
which a U.S.-backed police offensive busted up a decade ago - and may have
been linked to Mr. Mancilla's days as a prosecutor.

Mr. Mancilla investigated the Medellin cartel as a state prosecutor during
the 1990s, and had taken sworn statements from Pablo Escobar before the
drug kingpin died in a 1993 shootout with police.

Police were investigating who might have been behind the murder, and no one
ruled out that it was a settling of old scores by surviving members of the
Medellin cartel. But in this violent South American country, the list of
possible assailants is a long one, and includes leftist rebels.