URIBE ADVISOR WORRIES SOME IN U.S.

WASHINGTON - Several Republican legislators are expressing concern over the
possibility that President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia will name Pedro Juan
Moreno, a longtime advisor and friend who once had run-ins with the U.S.
Drug Enforcement Administration, as his national security chief.

The Bush administration, eager to welcome Uribe, who took over the
presidency of South America's most embattled country this week, said Friday
that it would have no problem with Moreno's appointment to any post.

''It is for President Uribe to decide who he will appoint to his national
security team,'' said Charles Barclay, spokesman for the State Department's
Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs. ``For our part, we look forward to
working with Colombia's new administration in combating narcotics
production.''

DEA Administrator Asa Hutchinson also said that he would not object to any
role for Moreno in Colombia's new government.

PUSH FOR DETAILS

But three Republican legislators have peppered the Bush administration for
details about Moreno's past, seeking information about four separate U.S.
seizures of a substance bound for Moreno's chemical company in Medellín in
1997, 1998 and 2000.

The seizures involved potassium permanganate, which has a variety of
legitimate uses as a bleach, oxidizer and purifying agent but is also vital
in the processing of cocaine.

Moreno, who was chief of staff to Uribe when he was governor of Antioquia
state in the 1990s, has stated that the chemicals were for legitimate
industrial purposes.

SEIZURE

Hutchinson wrote legislators that the DEA ordered seizure of three separate
shipments of potassium permanganate in late 1997 and early 1998. The
shipments were stopped in California as they were en route from China to
Moreno's company in Medellín, GMP Chemical Products, the counter-drug chief
wrote. The DEA ordered the seizures ''on the grounds that the chemicals may
be diverted'' to the illicit cocaine trade, he wrote.

Moreno's company contested the seizures, but the DEA denied the appeal and
asked for details about how the chemicals would be used, the letter says.

When the company did not respond, ''the chemicals were deemed abandoned and
then forfeited to the United States,'' Hutchinson wrote.

MYSTERY SHIPMENT

A fourth shipment of chemicals was halted in Puerto Rico in July 2000 en
route from the Netherlands, Hutchinson wrote.

The shipment was eventually returned to Holland.

''The issue of whether Mr. Moreno acted to facilitate cocaine production by
the sale of potassium permanganate is a matter of knowledge and intent which
[the] DEA does not have sufficient information to judge,'' Hutchinson wrote.

The legislators raising objections are three prominent Republicans with a
long-standing interest in counter-drug operations in Colombia: Reps. Dan
Burton and Bob Barr, who are respectively chairman and vice chairman of the
government reform committee; and Rep. Benjamin Gilman, former chairman of
the international relations committee.

The legislators first wrote Secretary of State Colin Powell on June 20
asking if U.S. officials had ever suspended the U.S. visa of Moreno.
Powell's response said Moreno's current visa had not been revoked,
generating more letters from Capitol Hill demanding to know if Moreno's past
visas ``had ever been suspended, withdrawn, frozen, or otherwise taken
away.''

Moreno told an El Nuevo Herald reporter in late June that he had held a U.S.
visa for 40 years and that it had never been revoked.