BUSH VOWS CONTINUED SUPPORT IN COLOMBIA DRUG WAR

Colombia was the third country on the president's five-nation tour of
Latin America.

President Bush pledged continued support Sunday to this strong but
drug and violence-plagued U.S. ally, on a visit marked by both warm
official welcomes and rioting protesters.

"Your country has come through very difficult times and now there's a
brighter day ahead," Bush said to President Alvaro Uribe after their
meetings and lunch at the presidential palace. "We have been friends
and we will remain friends."

Bush came to Colombia's capital for a show of confidence in Uribe and
the country's battle against narcoterrorists. But the stop was
clouded by a political scandal involving Uribe, and security jitters
had Bush staying only about six hours.

Colombia was the third country on the president's five-nation tour of
Latin America. He began his journey in Brazil, flew here from Uruguay
and was headed later Sunday to Guatemala. Bush last stops in Mexico
before returning to Washington on Wednesday.

Despite close ties between Uribe and Bush, the U.S. president's visit
has generated considerable criticism and strong protests.

About a mile away from the presidential palace that was the site for
all Bush's events, some 2,000 protesters chanted "Down with Bush" and
burned American flags.

About 150 of them broke away, attacking riot police with rocks and
metal barriers and ripping down lampposts. Some 200 helmeted police
in full body armor responded with water cannons and tear gas to
reclaim the street. The president's convoy passed about 200 yards
away. There were reports of one police officer was injured and three
dozen arrests.

Friday night, a concert by former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters
featured a big balloon of a pig that said "Patron Bush, Welcome to
your Colombian Ranch."

It was Bogota's first visit from a sitting president since Ronald
Reagan in 1982. Bush went in 2004 to coastal Cartagena, always deemed
far safer than the capital of this country afflicted by civil
conflict for half a century.

Bush received a red-carpet greeting by a military honor guard when
his plane landed. Upon arrival in the palace courtyard, horses
pranced and a large military band played the national anthems of both
countries before the two presidents reviewed troops.

Some 20,000 police and heavily armed troops were mobilized to prevent
any rebel attack.

Sharpshooters were positioned on rooftops, the city center was shut
down to traffic and Bogotanos had to do without their beloved
"ciclovia," in which major avenues are given over on Sundays to
biking, skating and jogging.

Bush rode to the palace on a route lined with gun-toting police
standing guard every few feet, and his motorcade included white
pickup trucks with local security officers filling the beds. Manhole
covers were spray-painted to alert security agents to tampering.

"The security measures are excessive," said 56-year-old Manuel
Cifuentes, who runs a food stand on the Plaza de Bolivar and said he
hasn't had much business in the last few days.

The president has indicated he will ask Congress to maintain current
aid levels to Colombia at roughly $700 million annually to support
the Latin American nation's fight against terrorism and drug
trafficking. Colombia receives more U.S. aid than any country outside
the Middle East and Afghanistan.

White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe noted Bush would meet with
Colombians involved in various U.S programs "that help them reap the
benefits of a democracy as well as demonstrate the compassion of the
American people."

Ahead of Bush's visit, the Colombian law-and-order president urged
for continued aid, crediting the U.S. assistance with helping to make
his violence-tortured nation more peaceful and less corrupt. The U.S.
has sent nearly $4 billion in mostly military aid to Colombia since
Uribe took office in 2002.

"We haven't yet won but we are winning. And we will persist," Uribe
said in an interview last week with The Associated Press.

But Democrats who now control the U.S. Congress have been asking
tough questions about that aid.

Eight close Uribe allies in Colombia's Congress, as well as his
hand-picked former domestic intelligence chief, have been jailed for
allegedly colluding with right-wing militias in a reign of terror
that nearly subverted Colombian democracy.

The scandal prompted Uribe's foreign minister to resign last month
when her senator brother and father, a regional power broker, were
implicated for alleged participation in the kidnapping of a political rival.

Many Democrats in the U.S. are expressing concern about Colombia's
human rights record. They also want greater emphasis on social
programs - more than 3 million have been displaced by the decades of
fighting - and on bolstering an overtaxed justice system.

Colombia remains the source of more than 90 percent of the world's
cocaine despite record aerial fumigation of coca crops. And the
leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, has neither
been defeated nor had any members of its leadership captured.

The paramilitaries, which gained control of the entire Caribbean
coast during the past decade, demobilized two years ago under a peace
pact with Uribe's government. The paramilitaries arose in response to
kidnappings and extortion by leftist rebels.

Bush and Uribe also were expected to discuss a U.S.-Colombia
free-trade agreement now before Congress. Colombian demonstrators
called for the scuttling of the pact, signed in November and
currently stalled in Congress.

Meanwhile, three Americans have been held by rebels for more than
four years in Colombia without the Bush administration taking routine
steps toward freeing them, current and former U.S. officials say.
Family members have cautioned the U.S. on a rescue attempt that could
bring the hostages' deaths.