MIAMI, July 28 (Reuter) A former accountant for the Cali cocaine cartel
said on Monday he agreed to work for the United States because he wanted to
protect his two sons following his wife's kidnapping by the cartel.

``I was in a very bad state of nerves when I realised that my wife, Patricia,
the mother of my children, had not appeared again,'' Guillermo Pallomari said
after recounting how his wife vanished in 1994, as he was meeting with U.S.
Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) officials.

He said he was told by a cartel member that his wife was kidnapped because he
had become a traitor to the group.

``After begging him to return my wife to me... he told me that these were the
consequences of having ignored the order of Mr. Miguel Rodriguez,'' he said
in a sixth day of testimony. Pallomari was referring to Miguel Rodriguez
Orejuela, who headed the infamous Colombian drug gang with his brother
Gilberto.

Pallomari, a Chilean national, is the star witness in the U.S. case against
two American lawyers, one of them a former Justice Department official, and
four accused South Florida smugglers on charges of obstructing justice and
drug trafficking.

Pallomari, who is currently imprisoned, agreed in October 1995 to plead
guilty to racketeering conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy charges and
to testify in the case.

As crossexamination began, the defence tried to show that Pallomari was a
desperate man who agreed to say whatever the United States wanted him to say.

John Bergendahl, defence attorney for one of the alleged traffickers,
questioned Pallomari closely about differences in statements he had made in
the past.

Earlier in his testimony, Pallomari said the cartel had agents infiltrated
throughout the Colombian government. Last week, he also testified that the
cartel had funnelled at least $5 million into President Ernesto Samper's
campaign.

Pallomari's testimony marked the first time a witness for the U.S. government
has alleged that the Samper campaign and other Colombian politicians took
bribes to pass laws that favoured drug traffickers.

Samper dismissed Pallomari's allegations as ``grotesquely false.'' He said
last week that the only agreement he ever struck with the Cali cartel was to
put its bosses behind bars and shoot those who tried to escape.

The trial in Miami came after a fouryear U.S. probe of the cartel.

On trial are Michael Abbell, who was chief of the U.S. Justice Department's
Office of International Affairs during the Reagan administration; William
Moran, a criminal defence attorney and former prosecutor; and four men U.S.
officials charge helped warehouse and ship drugs Luis Grajales, Eddie
Martinez, Ramon Martinez and Jose Herrera Solas.

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