COLOMBIAN LEADER DISPUTES CLAIM OF TIE TO COCAINE KINGPIN

BOGOTA, Colombia -- President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia lashed out on
Tuesday at claims in a new book that he had close ties to the cocaine
kingpin Pablo Escobar. He said he never aided Mr. Escobar's drug
dealings or benefited from his political patronage.

Mr. Uribe's comments were in response to the book, "Loving Pablo,
Hating Escobar," by Virginia Vallejo, Mr. Escobar's former mistress.
Ms. Vallejo repeats claims that Mr. Uribe, as head of the civil
aviation authority in the early 1980s, helped Mr. Escobar's cartel
secure licenses for landing strips used to transport cocaine.

"I had no political relations with Escobar, I had no business dealings
with Escobar and I was not a friend of Virginia Vallejo," Mr. Uribe
said in comments broadcast on Caracol Radio. Ms. Vallejo, who is
believed to be living outside Colombia, could not be reached for comment.

Mr. Uribe, the Bush administration's closest ally in South America,
has been dogged by claims of his links to Mr. Escobar since his
political star began to rise in the 1990s, claims that became
pronounced during his presidential campaign in 2002. Ms. Vallejo's
book, published here last month, had not received much publicity in
Colombia until Mr. Uribe's emotional reaction to it this week.

The president also denounced a journalist, Gonzalo Guillen, a
correspondent here for El Nuevo Herald of Miami, saying he helped Ms.
Vallejo write the book. The claim drew a sharp denial from Mr.
Guillen, who said he would sue Mr. Uribe for slander.

Ms. Vallejo, a former actress and television personality, also refers
to Mr. Uribe's father as one of Colombia's "first drug traffickers" in
her book. The president says his father was killed in 1983 by Marxist
rebels.

A declassified American intelligence report from 1991 cited Mr. Uribe
as a "close personal friend" of Mr. Escobar. The report, by the
Defense Intelligence Agency, also listed Mr. Uribe among Colombia's
important drug traffickers and said he was linked to an unidentified
business involved in narcotics in the United States.

Mr. Uribe's office denounced the intelligence report when it was first
publicized in 2004 as fitting within a trend of political attacks
against him, but did not specifically address the assertion that Mr.
Uribe was linked to Mr. Escobar. American officials have also
disavowed the report's findings. But Mr. Uribe's comments on Tuesday
show more explicit efforts to distance himself from any association
with Mr. Escobar, who was killed by the police in Medellin in 1993.

"These allegations are nothing new, but what we're seeing is an
increasingly diverse body of evidence," said Michael L. Evans,
director of the Colombia project at the National Security Archive, a
research group at George Washington University in Washington,
referring also to a 2002 book that made similar claims against Mr.
Uribe. The archive obtained the intelligence report.

This latest controversy occurs at a delicate time for Mr. Uribe, who
is trying to persuade lawmakers in the United States to approve a
trade deal. Despite his support of American measures aimed at limiting
Colombia's cocaine trade, concern persists over ties between some of
his political supporters and paramilitary death squads that deal in
cocaine.