COLOMBIAN GOVERNMENT SHAKEN BY LAWMAKERS' PARAMILITARY TIES

Investigation Leads to Arrest of Current, Former Officials

BOGOTA, Colombia - The government of President Alvaro Uribe is being
shaken by its most serious political crisis yet, as details emerge
about members of Congress who collaborated with right-wing death
squads to spread terror and exert political control across Colombia's
Caribbean coast.

Two senators, Alvaro Garcia and Jairo Merlano, are in custody, as is a
congressman, Eric Morris, and a former congresswoman, Muriel Benito.
Four local officials have been arrested, and a warrant has been issued
for a former governor, Salvador Arana. All are from the state of
Sucre, where the attorney general's office has been exhuming bodies
from mass graves -- victims of a paramilitary campaign to erode
civilian support for Marxist rebels in Colombia's long conflict.

The investigation, which has revealed how lawmakers and paramilitary
commanders rigged elections and planned assassinations, has shaken
Colombia's Congress to its core. One powerful senator from Cesar
state, Alvaro Araujo, has warned that if he is targeted in the
investigation, it would taint relatives of his in the government and,
ultimately, the president, whom he has strongly supported.

The arrests and disclosures about the investigation, which is focusing
on at least five more members of Congress, come weeks after
prosecutors leaked a report revealing how paramilitary fighters have
killed hundreds of people, trafficked cocaine to the United States and
sacked government institutions while negotiating a disarmament with
Uribe's government.

Mario Iguaran, the attorney general, said the crisis is worse than the
scandal that tarnished former president Ernesto Samper, who in the
1990s was accused of having used drug money to fund his political
campaign. The United States withdrew his visa in response.

Uribe's government says it has been tough on the paramilitary forces,
noting that 30,000 fighters have demobilized in three years, a
disarmament larger than that of any leftist rebel group in Latin
American history.

But the latest scandal has raised questions about how effective the
disarmament has been and whether the government is truly committed to
dismantling an organization that has infiltrated town halls, hospitals
and even the government's intelligence agency, the DAS. Just this
week, the inspector general's office leveled disciplinary charges
against the former head of the DAS, Jorge Noguera, for having given
classified information about the agency's operations to paramilitary
forces.

"In plain public view and with evidence, the tip of the iceberg has
appeared, but it is just the tip of the iceberg," said Gustavo Petro,
a senator who has revealed details of paramilitary infiltration of
government institutions in hearings. "We see it today in Sucre, but it
extends beyond."

Recalling past statements from top paramilitary commanders, who
boasted of having formed alliances with as much as a third of
Congress, Petro said, "I think the paramilitaries were right."

Reacting to the crisis on Friday, Uribe said, "It's healthy for the
country to know the political ties that exist with
paramilitarism."

"I call on all the congressmen to, of their own initiative, show up
before judges and tell the truth," he said in a speech marking the
anniversary of the Supreme Court.

Uribe's image as a crusader against Colombia's illegal armed groups,
however, has been tarnished.

The congressmen who have been implicated were members of a bloc that
was loyal to the president and that approved a law permitting him to
run for a second four-year term in May. They also supported a law
governing the disarmament of paramilitary fighters that has been
roundly criticized by the United Nations and some on Capitol Hill for
providing too many loopholes for commanders to evade justice.

"There's no doubt that the political base in the provinces is
tainted," said Gustavo Duncan, a security analyst who has written a
book on the paramilitary forces, "The Gentlemen of War." "Those are
the great losers. And those regional leaders are where Uribe has
gotten much of his power."

The tainted politicians came to the attention of authorities through
an informer, a onetime paramilitary fighter named Jairo Castillo
Peralta, and because their names turned up in a computer confiscated
from one of the country's most powerful paramilitary commanders,
Rodrigo Tovar. The computer files detail meetings between paramilitary
forces and lawmakers such as Sen. Dieb Maloof, who lives in the city
of Barranquilla but has campaigned in Sucre.

Reached by phone, Maloof denied involvement with the paramilitary
groups but said he is ready to answer questions put forward by the
Supreme Court, which is investigating the Congress. "I asked to be
able to give my own version, and to find out if there is anything
against me," he said.

The best-known of the lawmakers implicated in the scandal is Alvaro
Garcia, a rotund local boss known by friends and enemies alike as "the
Fat Man." In a secret recording from Oct. 6, 2000, that is being used
against him, Garcia and a well-known cattleman, Joaquin Garcia, are
heard coordinating the paramilitary assault on the town of Macayepo. A
few days later, paramilitary fighters killed 16 peasant farmers there
with rocks and machetes.

Petro, the senator, said the Uribe administration must aggressively
purge those lawmakers with ties to paramilitary forces. "No matter how
many congressmen go to jail, there are mafias still out there, and
they will continue to find others to control," he said. "This is not
just a judicial responsibility, this is a political responsibility."