COLOMBIAN SEEKS TO PERSUADE CONGRESS TO CONTINUE AID

CARACAS, Venezuela -- Faced with allegations of government ties to
paramilitary death squads and criticism from prominent Democrats,
President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia is heading to Washington this week
to try to unlock frozen American aid and salvage a trade agreement
with the United States.

It is not clear whether Mr. Uribe will succeed, despite having the
best relations with President Bush of any South American leader. Mr.
Uribe boasts high approval ratings in Colombia, but a scandal over
links between outlawed paramilitary groups and his close political
allies has eroded his credibility in Washington.

"We need vigilance by our own government and assurances that our aid
is not going to anyone linked to illegal groups," said Senator
Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is the leader of the
Senate panel that oversees aid to Colombia. After the Middle East and
Afghanistan, Colombia is the largest recipient of American
assistance, with more than $4 billion disbursed this decade.

Mr. Leahy put a hold on $55.2 million in military aid to Colombia
this month while awaiting clarification on intelligence claims of
collaboration between Colombia's army and paramilitaries, which have
been classified as terrorist groups by the State Department.

Both the paramilitaries and guerrilla insurgents have committed
atrocities against Colombians and shipped large amounts of cocaine to
the United States during an internal war that has lasted decades.

Mr. Uribe's reaction to the scandal may have worsened his standing in
the United States Congress since control passed to the Democrats. He
has lashed out at domestic political opponents, saying he had placed
opposition lawmakers who had met with Democratic leaders in
Washington under surveillance.

Much of Mr. Uribe's ire has been directed at Senator Gustavo Petro, a
lawmaker and former member of the M-19 rebel movement who has pushed
for investigations of paramilitary groups. In testimony before
Colombia's Congress this month, Mr. Petro asserted that
paramilitaries held meetings on ranches owned by Mr. Uribe and his
brother in the late 1980s before embarking on nighttime killing raids.

Senior Colombian officials and Mr. Uribe himself have vehemently
denied the accusations. Still, investigators are looking into
paramilitary ties of more than a dozen allies of Mr. Uribe, including
his former domestic intelligence chief, who is accused of supplying
the militias with details on academics and union officials who were
chosen for assassination.

Mr. Uribe, who is scheduled to be in Washington from Tuesday through
Thursday to meet with President Bush, Democratic lawmakers and human
rights groups, declined requests for an interview.

Vice President Francisco Santos expressed concern that deteriorating
relations with Democratic leaders could endanger advances Colombia
has made in reducing urban violence, demobilizing thousands of
paramilitary fighters and economic growth. "There is friendly fire
from the Democrats of which Colombia is becoming the casualty," Mr.
Santos said in a telephone interview.

"We stabilized a country that was going to shambles," Mr. Santos
said, noting that Washington's large assistance project for Colombia
was conceived under President Clinton. Mr. Santos said paramilitary
ties were coming to light because of the resilience of institutions
carrying out independent investigations.

Mr. Uribe is popular in Colombia after limiting the reach of the war
into large cities while riding an economic growth wave. "He received
a country with 21 percent unemployment and today has it at 13
percent," said Rafael Nieto, a political analyst in Bogota.

Mr. Uribe's critics say he is doing relatively little to move the
investigations forward and ensure the safety of his opponents. Mr.
Petro, the opposition lawmaker, said he had uncovered a plot to kill
him led by Juan Villate, a security official for the Drummond
Company, an American coal producer with operations in Colombia.

Drummond said in a statement that the accusations against Mr.
Villate, who had previously worked as a security official at the
United States Embassy in Bogota, were "politically motivated."

"I have had an avalanche of hostile actions against me," Mr. Petro
said in a telephone interview, adding that family members had also
received death threats.

Human rights groups have criticized the killings of trade union
officials and violations by Colombia's armed forces, creating another
obstacle to securing Congressional approval of new military aid and
the trade agreement, which has already been signed by Mr. Bush and
Mr. Uribe. Fifty-eight trade unionists were killed in 2006, up from
40 the previous year, though labor groups say government estimates of
the homicides are too low.

"Colombia has no real answer to these killings," said Maria
McFarland, a researcher for Human Rights Watch.

Colombian business leaders argue that a trade agreement is needed to
open new markets for Colombian goods. But critics say it could
increase American agribusiness exports like soybeans, effectively
restricting access to the important Colombian market for relatively
poor neighboring countries like Bolivia.

The Bush administration, meanwhile, has requested $3.9 billion in
additional aid for Colombia, which is still the world's largest
supplier of cocaine. John P. Walters, the director of the White House
Office of National Drug Control Policy, acknowledged in a recent
letter to Senator Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican, that
street prices of cocaine in the United States had dropped more than
10 percent from 2005 to 2006 and that the drug's purity levels had
also increased.

Mr. Uribe's unwavering support of Mr. Bush, meanwhile, seems to have
won him little respect among leading Democrats. Former Vice President
Al Gore, for instance, recently canceled an appearance at a Miami
conference attended by Mr. Uribe because of concerns over the claims
of his paramilitary ties.

Political analysts in Washington and Bogota do not expect the United
States to cut off aid to Colombia. Rather, they see Washington
retooling aid to strengthen judicial institutions that carry out
investigations while still supporting Colombia's military. But to
reach that point, they say, Mr. Uribe needs to aggressively advance
investigations of the reach of paramilitary groups.