GUNMEN KILL COLOMBIAN ARCHBISHOP

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Gunmen killed Archbishop Isaias Duarte Cancino of the
city of Cali on Saturday, silencing a voice that had often been critical of
leftist Colombian rebels.

The gray-haired, 63-year-old bespectacled archbishop had just completed a
nighttime group wedding and was heading to his car when he was shot by two
gunmen outside the Buen Pastor church in a working-class neighborhood of
Cali, witnesses said. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

Duarte was dead on arrival at Carlos Holmes Trujillo Hospital, said
hospital director Ricardo Vanegas. TV footage showed people weeping outside
the hospital in Cali, Colombia's third-largest city.

Edilberto Ceballos, Duarte's driver, told Caracol radio network that the
archbishop was shot several times, including in the head.

"Two guys came and opened fire and hit him three or four times, maybe even
six times," the driver said. "I saw him dead."

Hours after the attack Saturday night, electrical power went out in
Colombia's three biggest cities -- Bogota, Medellin and Cali -- leaving
millions of people in the dark. News reports said up to 70 percent of
Colombia had suffered a blackout.

Rebels have been attacking the nation's infrastructure, including blowing
up electrical transmission towers, but Javier Gutierrez, the manager of the
national electrical company ISSA, the massive outage was due to a technical
problem and not a guerrilla attack.

Duarte frequently criticized leftist rebels for their attacks and
kidnappings. Colombia's 38-year-old civil war has intensified since peace
talks with the main rebel army, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia,
or FARC, collapsed on Feb. 20.

A smaller rebel group, the National Liberation Army, known as the ELN, also
earned Duarte's ire for conducting mass kidnappings in Cali in recent
years, including abducting worshippers at a Cali church. Although talks
with the FARC collapsed, the ELN is participating in peace talks with
Colombian government representatives in Havana.

Duarte recently said publicly that money from drug traffickers was being
used in the campaigns of some candidates in the March 10 congressional
election. He did not name any specific candidates even though President
Andres Pastrana urged him to.

Drug traffickers have bloodied Colombia in the past. In the 1980s and
1990s, the now-defunct Medellin cartel -- then the world's biggest
cocaine-trafficking syndicate -- assassinated hundreds of people in a war
of terrorism in Colombia.

The archbishop of Bogota, Pedro Rubiano, said he was devastated by Duarte's
killing.

"It is inconceivable that a good man, a man who dedicated his life to
loving God and serving his brothers, has become a victim of the terrible
violence which is ripping apart this country," Rubiano said.

Alvaro Uribe, who is leading the polls ahead of the May 26 presidential
election, said he was saddened by the assassination.

"The truth is that he is irreplaceable," Uribe said during a Cali campaign
swing.

Pope John Paul II named Duarte archbishop in Cali, 185 miles southwest of
Bogota, the capital, on Aug. 19, 1995.

Colombia's war pits the FARC and the ELN against the government's armed
forces and an illegal right-wing paramilitary group. About 3,500 people --
most of them civilians -- are killed in the war annually.

Paramilitary leader Carlos Castano said in a recent biography that he
considered the archbishop "a friend." Duarte reportedly was nervous about
that description, since being identified too closely with one of the
warring sides can make one a target. Duarte also criticized the
paramilitaries for their brutal tactics.

Duarte is not the first outspoken Roman Catholic bishop to die amid the
throes of civil war in Latin America.

El Salvador's Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero was assassinated by a sniper
in March 1980, a day after delivering a sermon asking the military to halt
its repressive tactics in El Salvador's civil war. A truth commission found
evidence that his killing was ordered by ultra-right elements.

Three army soldiers and a priest were convicted in the 1998 slaying of
Guatemalan bishop Juan Jose Gerardi, two days after he presented a report
blaming the military for most of the 200,000 deaths in Guatemala's
1960-1996 civil war. Gerardi was bludgeoned to death at his seminary in
Guatemala City.