COLOMBIA PROBES POLICE CHIEFS OVER MISSING U.S. AID

BOGOTA, Colombia - (Reuters) - Colombia's attorney general's office on
Tuesday said it was investigating 44 senior police officers, including the
president's security coordinator, over the disappearance of about $2
million in U.S. aid meant for the war on drugs.

The widening probe in the world's largest cocaine producer targets police
bosses for violations ranging from failure to supervise subordinates to
expensing the same item twice to a special, U.S.- funded anti-narcotics
account, the office said.

President Andres Pastrana's security coordinator, Lt. Col. Henry Rey
Castaneda, was being investigated for using the fund to pay for
unauthorized goods, the office said. Castaneda could not immediately be
reached for comment.

Washington froze the account in early March but news of the missing cash
only became public in May. While the account received only a small part of
the hundreds of millions of dollars in incoming U.S. aid, the scandal has
already led to more than a dozen officers leaving their posts.

It also comes at an awkward time for President-elect Alvaro Uribe. Next
week, he will lobby in Washington for the United States to allow him to use
anti-drug aid in Colombia's fight against Latin America's oldest and
largest leftist rebel force, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or
FARC.

Washington says the FARC are drug trafficking "terrorists," who use cocaine
profits to wage a 38-year-old guerrilla war.

The United States has already doled out more than $1.5 billion in mostly
military aid for Bogota's fight against cocaine. It is the biggest U.S.
military aid program in Latin America since El Salvador's civil war in the
1980s.

On its list of those under investigation, the attorney general's office
named former anti-narcotics police chief, Gen. Gustavo Socha first among 44
officers and several lower-ranking policemen.

Socha was transferred from his post as the scandal erupted last month, and
subsequently quit after being demoted. More than a dozen officers have been
fired or resigned.

U.S. officials, who wished to remain anonymous, have said they suspect the
missing funds ended up in the pockets of a few officers.

At a news conference last month, Socha said the funds might have been
misdirected by well-intentioned police officers to otherwise legitimate
government ends that were not directly linked to the drug fight.

He offered as a possible example that drinking water was bought for
policemen stationed in areas where there was no water supply using money
from the U.S.-funded account. The U.S. money was meant to cover
administrative expenses.

Despite the hefty U.S. investment in the war on drugs, Washington has yet
to see any impact on the amount or price of cocaine reaching American
streets. The United States is the world's largest cocaine consuming nation.