BOGOTA, Colombia -- An investigation that has already bared ties between government officials and paramilitary death squads in six of Colombia's coastal states has now widened to the home state of President Alvaro Uribe, focusing on his administration's politically powerful allies, judicial officials say.

The development could further complicate Colombia's efforts to secure a free-trade pact with the United States, where some Democrats on Capitol Hill are increasingly concerned about the growing scandal.

Colombia's Supreme Court, which is responsible for investigating malfeasance in Congress, has received detailed evidence that has spurred an investigation concerning three lawmakers from Antioquia state, one of them Sen. Ruben Dario Quintero, Uribe's private secretary when he was governor there from 1995 to 1997.

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Colombia Is Making A Significant Shift In Priorities In Its War Against Drugs And Guerrillas, But Critics Wonder If It Will Be Implemented

BOGOTA -- With all the hoopla surrounding President Bush's recent visit to Colombia, few seemed to notice the arrival the next day of German President Horst Kohler, on the first visit since 1971 by a German head of state.

But Kohler's visit symbolized a tenuous but nevertheless significant European nod of approval for a shift in Colombia's anti-drug policy, criticized here and abroad over the years as being too much military stick and not enough economic carrots.

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The Allegations Come As Congress Reviews Aid To The U.S. Ally. The CIA Says The Intelligence Hasn't Been Fully Vetted

WASHINGTON -- The CIA has obtained new intelligence alleging that the head of Colombia's U.S.-backed army collaborated extensively with right-wing militias that Washington considers terrorist organizations, including a militia headed by one of the country's leading drug traffickers.

Disclosure of the allegation about army chief Gen. Mario Montoya comes as the high level of U.S. support for Colombia's government is under scrutiny by Democrats in Congress. The disclosure could heighten pressure to reduce or redirect that aid because Montoya has been a favorite of the Pentagon and an important partner in the U.S.-funded counterinsurgency strategy called Plan Colombia. The $700 million a year Colombia receives makes it the third-largest beneficiary of U.S. foreign assistance.

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A task force plays a role in the confiscation of 20 tons of the drug from a ship off Panama

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA -- Twenty tons of cocaine seized off the Pacific coast of Panama over the weekend were believed headed to a Mexican port for delivery to the notorious Sinaloa cartel, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

The seizure Sunday of drugs valued at more than $275 million wholesale was described by the officials as the largest recorded maritime cocaine bust.

The drugs were believed to have been purchased by Ismael Zambada, a suspected leader of Mexico's so-called Sinaloa cartel, officials said. The cache was seized aboard a 300-foot Panamanian-flagged freighter destined for an unspecified port in Mexico.

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CARACAS, Venezuela -- Colombian officials said over the weekend that they would consider seeking the extradition of senior executives of Chiquita Brands International after the company pleaded guilty in United States federal court to making payments to paramilitary death squads.

Chiquita, one of the world's largest banana producers, agreed to pay a fine of $25 million last week to the United States Justice Department to settle the case. Chiquita told the Justice Department that from 1997 to 2004, a subsidiary in Colombia had paid $1.7 million to right-wing paramilitary groups, which are classified by the United States government as terrorist organizations.

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BOGOTA, COLOMBIA -- Saying he's proud to call Colombia's scandal-weakened leader his friend, President Bush pledged Sunday to press for more aid to help the him fight drug traffickers and guerrillas and secure a trade accord for the South American nation.

But even though Bush received a warm welcome from President Alvaro Uribe, the Bush administration's closest ally in Latin America, he stayed in Bogota just seven hours because of security concerns.

On the streets of the capital, anti-Bush protesters clashed with riot police, looted banks and set fires, but they were kept well away from the presidential palace where the leaders conferred.

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Amid Tight Security, He And Colombian Leader Vow To Fight Traffickers

BOGOTA, Colombia - Amid tight security, the presidents of the United States and Colombia vowed an ongoing alliance to fight the drug trade and the rebel groups that feed off it.

"This country has come through some very difficult times," President Bush said at the side of President Alvaro Uribe, a close ally whose country receives more U.S. aid than any outside the Middle East. "I'm looking forward very much to ... continuing to work with you to defeat the drug lords and narco-traffickers - the narco-terrorists." Mr. Bush has proposed about $700 million in direct annual aid on top of the $4 billion Colombia has received since Mr. Uribe took office in 2002. The Colombian leader prodded Mr. Bush for even more, saying U.S. support has helped curb crime, corruption and the drug trade and weakened left-wing guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries.

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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."

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America's 6-Year, $6B Effort To Eradicate Drug In Colombia Has Mixed Results

Soacha, Colombia - Maria Ayara lives with her children and other relatives near Bogota. She had lived and grown coffee in the countryside with her husband until coca-growing militia usurped their land. The men came in the night, men from the militias that prowl Colombia's lawless coca-growing regions. They were there to grab control of the coca zone. They took away her husband, and a hundred others. Some were butchered. Hers disappeared. She fled with their four children and the clothes on her back. Now she makes $6 a week, working every day at a small store in a slum near Bogota.

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Only three days have passed since airplanes dumped chemicals near this isolated village to destroy coca plants, the raw ingredient in cocaine that winds up on American streets.

But Jorlin Giovanny, one of some 300 peasants who live here, is already rescuing the seeds from dead crops to plant a new batch.

"What else are we going to do?" asked Giovanny, while he replanted tidy rows in his backyard. "There's no other option."

Aerial spraying is part of the U.S. government's seven-year, $4.7 billion anti-drug effort that ran its course last year. As President Bush visits Colombia today, his administration has long praised the plan for slashing cocaine production and reducing violence in the nation, which is the world's largest exporter of the drug.

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He used to be Jorge Salcedo, and he helped authorities bring down the cocaine kingpins of Colombia.

Miami - The official end of the notorious Cali cocaine cartel came late last year here with little more commotion than the rap of a judge's gavel.

The Colombian drug lords Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela, 63, and Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, 67, entered guilty pleas and were ushered off to federal prison for the next 30 years - no Miami Vice-like dramatics, no bodies riddled with gunfire in the manner of Medellin rival Pablo Escobar.

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Cucuta is the contraband capital of Colombia, where powerful criminal syndicates own the local government and patrol the slums, acting as sheriff in this frontier town.

It is also the departure point for most of the cocaine that lands on British shores.

There is not even a pretence of legality in Cucuta. Along the border there is a staggering concentration of old American jalopies, and contraband petrol is sold openly along the highways.

"They have massive fuel tanks, the American cars," muttered Orlando, sucking on his last remaining teeth.

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A Minister Resigned Monday, Days After Her Brother's Arrest For Helping Paramilitaries

Bogota, Colombia -- Colombia is scrambling to contain international fallout from a ballooning political scandal surrounding ties between some of President lvaro Uribe's closest collaborators and right-wing death squads.

Mr. Uribe's image has been tarnished by the arrest of eight lawmakers from his governing coalition, jailed on charges they colluded with paramilitary groups responsible for some of Colombia's most grisly crimes. The crisis threatens to debilitate his government just as it seeks a new $3.9 billion US aid package and ratification of a free trade deal with Washington, and prepares for a visit by President Bush next month.

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MEDELLIN, COLOMBIA -- Every morning, when the mist burned off in this mountain city, they found the bodies.

In 1991 alone, in a municipality of 1.7 million people, 6,349 were homicide victims, 18 times the rate in Miami-Dade that year and 37 times that of Palm Beach County.

Residents of a town near Medellin, San Luis Antioquia, go through the ruins of their homes, which were attacked and destroyed by leftist guerrillas in 1999.

Members of the United Self Defense Forces, a vigilante army, overlook Medellin in this 2002 photo. About 4,000 have accepted amnesty and receive about $300 per month as well as education and job training.

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Five More Lawmakers Are Arrested, Accused of Having Ties to Illegal Paramilitary Groups.

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA -- The scandal involving alleged links between Colombian lawmakers and illegal paramilitary groups widened Thursday with the arrest of five more members of Congress, including a senator who is the brother of Foreign Minister Maria Consuelo Araujo.

The arrests of Sen. Alvaro Araujo and the others could further tarnish President Alvaro Uribe, who since being reelected to a second term in a landslide last year has been rocked by allegations that some close legislative supporters have ties to the right-wing armies. The arrests are also bound to increase calls that Maria Araujo resign.

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BOGOTA, Colombia -- The government of President Alvaro Uribe, the largest recipient of American aid outside the Middle East, has found itself ensnared in a widening scandal as revelations surface of a secret alliance between some of the president's most prominent political supporters and paramilitary death squads.

Testimony this week from Salvatore Mancuso, a former paramilitary commander who admitted to orchestrating the killing of more than 300 people, as well as a document made public on Friday implicating more than a dozen politicians in the pact with paramilitaries, have injected fresh detail into a slow-burning scandal that has caused Colombia's elite political class to shudder in recent weeks.

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Guillermo Is a Guerrilla With a Price on His Head; Roberto Is a Peacemaker

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Roberto and Guillermo Saenz were the youngest and middle of seven children born to conservative schoolteachers half a century ago. As a war between the army and Marxist guerrillas gathered force, Roberto recalls being sheltered by Guillermo and his other siblings in a childhood full of "studying, futbol and fiestas." Then when Roberto was entering the university and Guillermo was nearing graduation, Guillermo broke some news. " 'Man, I don't see any sense in all of this,' " Roberto recalls his brother saying. " 'I'm going.' " Guillermo fled into the jungle to join the largest leftist guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, eventually rising to the rank of "ideological leader" of the seven-member ruling secretariat. Today, he's one of the most wanted men in the Americas, with a price on his head of $2 million from the Colombian government and $5 million from the U.S.

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A Colombian senator and son of a presidential candidate assassinated by deceased drug kingpin Pablo Escobar has called for a congressional debate on the taboo subject of drug legalization.

"The current repressive approach against drug trafficking hasn't worked despite the huge amounts of blood we Colombians have shed," Sen. Juan Manuel Galan, of the opposition Liberal Party, told The Associated Press on Thursday. "It's time to look at different options, together with other drug-production nations, as a way to break the back of the drug traffickers."

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The Ornery Beasts Were Brought To Colombia To Grace A Drug Lord's Estate. He Is Long Gone, But They Have Thrived -- And Outgrown Their Welcome

Puerto Triunfo, Colombia - Hacienda Napoles was Pablo Escobar's pleasure palace, a 5,500-acre estate where the notorious drug lord reigned over million-dollar cocaine deals, parties with underage girls and visits by shadowy men of power.

Escobar lived large here in his lush fiefdom 100 miles east of Medellin, far from the teeming slums where he began his life of crime. He built a bullring, an airstrip, an ersatz Jurassic Park with half a dozen immense concrete dinosaurs. He stocked a private wild animal park with hundreds of animals, including elephants, camels, giraffes, ostriches and zebras. He installed four hippos in one of the estate's 12 man-made lakes.

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BOGOTA - The former director of Colombia's FBI, known as DAS, ordered that information compromising agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration be leaked to drug traffickers, former DAS official Rafael Garcia has told government investigators.

Garcia, once chief of DAS' computer systems, confirmed to El Nuevo Herald in a telephone interview from prison that he has told Supreme Court investigators that Jorge Noguera ordered him to deliver the information to the traffickers.

"I carried the information in hard disks or in USB memory, per instructions from Noguera," said Garcia, who this month was sentenced to 18 years in prison for corruption.

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