|
 BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - President Alvaro Uribe defended his battered administration Wednesday against a flurry of new blows: a wiretapping scandal, the jailing of more congressional allies and a paramilitary warlord's claims that two high-ranking officials conspired with far-right militias.
Salvatore Mancuso, in an explosive judicial hearing, affirmed what human rights organizations have long claimed: that Colombia's top military commanders systematically colluded with the illegal militias. He also claimed that two conglomerates paid the paramilitaries.
Since Uribe's 2002 election, Colombia's armed forces have forced leftist rebels to retreat into Colombia's thick jungles and Andean highlands, spurred by more than half a billion dollars in mostly U.S. military aid each year.
|