DID ARCHBISHOP KNOW OF DRUG AID?

Information May Have Resulted In Duarte's Slaying

CALI, Colombia - Days before this month's legislative elections, the late
Archbishop Isaias Duarte said some candidates had received campaign money
from drug lords.

Even though the 63-year-old archbishop of Cali did not name names,
authorities believed his information about the "narcos" was explosive
enough to put his life in danger.

On Saturday, those fears were realized when Duarte was gunned down outside
the Buen Pastor church, where he had just presided over a group wedding in
a working-class neighborhood. The two gunmen escaped. No one has claimed
responsibility.

"The first hypothesis points to hot money of drug traffickers and their
relationship with subversives because of the recent statements the
archbishop made," Attorney General Luis Camilo Osorio said.

Osorio said leftist rebels, also called "subversives," have been financing
their 38-year war against the government by producing cocaine, which then
is exported to the United States and beyond by traffickers.

The Rev. German Robledo, a top church official in Cali, said Duarte made
his allegations after parish priests showed him evidence that at least
three drug trafficking organizations in the area were buying votes and
financing candidates.

The groups included traffickers based in the northern part of Valle de
Cauca state, of which Cali is the capital, as well as the western port of
Buenaventura and the center of the state, Robledo added.

"We presume this was the work of drug traffickers," he said.

Duarte also was a tough critic of leftist rebels and even had
excommunicated them, leading many Cali residents to believe guerrillas were
behind the killing. He also denounced a brutal rightist paramilitary group
during an earlier posting in a conflictive northern region known as Uraba.

President Andres Pastrana, who visited Cali on Sunday, announced a $434,000
reward for information on the triggermen or those who ordered the
assassination.

Two gunmen, police sketches of whom were shown Sunday, repeatedly shot
Duarte as he emerged from the lime-green church. He collapsed 50 feet from
the front door. A bloodstained patch of dirt has been covered with a wooden
cross and bouquets of flowers.

Duarte was a beloved man in Cali, where thousands paid their respects
Sunday by filing past the bishop's open wood casket. Dressed in white
vestments, Duarte's body was laid out in an open wooden casket flanked by
white-helmeted military police and illuminated by candles in the cool, dark
cathedral.

"This city is in pain," said Humberto Rodriguez, a retired electrician.

Pope John Paul II named Duarte archbishop in Cali, 185 miles southwest of
Bogota, the capital, in August 1995.

The pontiff said Sunday that the cleric had "paid the highest price" for
defending human life and opposing violence.

"I urge Colombians once again to follow the way of dialogue, excluding all
types of violence, blackmail and kidnapping of people and to firmly commit
themselves to what are the true roads of peace," the pope said at St.
Peter's Square in the Vatican.

Cali's mayor, Jhon Maro Rodriguez, declared three days of mourning and
scheduled a citywide moment of silence and candlelight vigil for Monday.

Sister Gloria Ocampo, who attended an early morning Mass in the cathedral,
described Duarte as a champion of the poor who built dozens of schools
during his seven years as archbishop of Colombia's third- largest city. She
said Duarte's frankness had made him martyr.

"He was a very sincere person who talked without considering the
consequences," she said. "He criticized the drug traffickers, the
guerrillas and the paramilitaries - everybody who was against peace."

Colombia's civil war pits the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or
FARC, and the National Liberation Army, or ELN, against the government's
armed forces and an illegal right-wing paramilitary group. About 3,500
people - most of them civilians - are killed annually.

Paramilitary leader Carlos Castano said in a recent biography that he
considered the archbishop "a friend." Duarte reportedly was nervous about
that description because he believed it could make him a target.

The death of Duarte, the highest-ranking Catholic clergyman killed during
decades of violence in the South American county, evoked the memories of
other Latin American Roman Catholic leaders who were assassinated.

El Salvador Archbishop Oscar Romero, shot by a sniper in 1980, had decried
the brutality of the country's military during its civil war.

Guatemalan Bishop Juan Jose Gerardi was bludgeoned to death in 1998 after
accusing the military of human rights abuses during its civil war.

In Mexico, drug traffickers killed Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo in 1993.