Colombia

BOGOTA, Colombia - Colombia's Congress approved an amendment to the Constitution late Tuesday that would permit President Alvaro Uribe, the Bush administration's most reliable ally in Latin America, to run for re-election in 2006. The main article in the five-point amendment, approved by a vote of 113-16, lifts the ban on re-election, leaving it up to the country's highest court to decide if the change is constitutional. Political analysts believe the Constitutional Court would be likely to approve the change after some debate.

BOGOTA, Colombia - Marxist rebels tried to organize an assassination attempt against President Bush during his visit to the port city of Cartagena last week, a top Colombian official said yesterday. Defense Secretary Jorge Alberto Uribe told reporters in Bogota that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a rebel group known as FARC that has been fighting Colombia's government for decades, had plotted to kill Bush. "Through informants and various sources, we had information indicating that different groups of the FARC had been instructed by the secretariat [of the FARC]

Maria Full of Grace reminds us of a key truth when considering those who inhabit the outer fringes of society: They're people, too. That first-time writer-director Joshua Marston is able to remind us of that in the context of an honestly acted and genuinely suspenseful drama makes this one of the most pleasant surprises of the summer. Maria offers a window into a world most of us probably have never given a second thought, offering a study of human tragedy made all the more stark by its seeming inevitability.

BOGOTA, Colombia - Trading combat fatigues for business suits, three top commanders of Colombia's right-wing death squads emerged from their government-granted haven in the north to speak before the country's Congress yesterday, professing firm commitment to fragile peace talks aimed at disarming their 15,000-member paramilitary force. Traveling with government-issued 48-hour safe-conduct passes shielding them from arrest and, in the case of one of the three, extradition to the United States on drug charges, they flew to Bogota on a military plane and were escorted to the ornate Capitol by state security forces.

BOGOTA, Colombia - The Colombian government blamed leftist rebels yesterday for the killing of 34 coca pickers in a rampage that has aroused fears of a new wave of drug-fueled violence. The attack, Tuesday morning in the cocaine-rich La Gabarra municipality, was the worst since hard-line President Alvaro Uribe Velez took office in August 2002. He began an aggressive military offensive against Colombia's armed outlaws and opened peace talks with right-wing paramilitary death squads. The government blamed the massacre on rebels.

As I hailed a taxi at Panama City's Tocumen International Airport, an affable young man named Patricio asked to share a ride with me. A travel agent, he had just returned home from several days of meetings in the United States. While we sped toward downtown, Patricio explained the purpose of his visit north. "I was trying to let people know that Panama City isn't the boonies," he said. "We have tall buildings! We have cell phones!" Indeed. Visitors are usually shocked that Panama City is so large -- nearly a million people live there, 2.7 million in the entire country -- and cosmopolitan.

Armed forces chief is latest to resign in Colombian shake-up BOGOTA, Colombia - The commander of Colombia's armed forces said yesterday that he is resigning, joining three Cabinet ministers who have stepped down in a shake-up marring President Alvaro Uribe's administration. Gen. Jorge Enrique Mora, 58, a hard-nosed soldier with 42 years of army experience and an intense, vocal hatred of Marxist rebels, said in a nationally televised news conference that five years as the military's top commander was enough.

Colombia makes strides against rights abuses The Sun's editorial "The other war" (Oct. 7) stated that human rights violations against the Colombian military increased between 2000 and 2002. This is not the case. As reported by the U.S. Department of State in March, during 2002, the Colombian attorney general's office received 395 complaints of alleged violations of human rights by state agents, compared with 502 complaints in 2001. This 21 percent decrease is consistent with the trend over the past several years and represents a significant decline since the mid-1990s, when Colombia's attorney general would receive more than 3,000 complaints a year.

IF IRAQ IS the central front in the U.S. war on terrorism, Colombia is the hot spot of America's war on drugs. With American troops dying nearly every day in the former, the Bush administration received some encouraging news recently in the latter confrontation. Colombia, the third-largest recipient of U.S. aid, posted a significant decrease -- 32 percent -- in coca production in the first seven months of this year, according to the United Nations Drug Control Program. The study attributed the decline in acres planted to the U.S.-financed aerial spraying campaign, a major component of American foreign policy in an impoverished nation that is engulfed in a protracted civil war. The decline in coca production should mean a decrease in the cocaine moving through U.S. cities and a financial hit for the leftist insurgents and right-wing militias that rely on it to fund their brutal civil war. But the U.N. findings shouldn't lead to automatic approval of the U.S. aid package to Colombia when it comes up for a vote in the Senate later this year.

BOGOTA, Colombia - A motorcycle carrying a bomb exploded in a nightclub district in a war-torn region in southern Colombia early yesterday, killing at least 10 people and wounding more than 50. Military authorities blamed the 3 a.m. blast in the regional capital of Florencia on leftist guerrillas belonging to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the country's largest rebel group. The rebels issued no immediate statement on the attack. The bombing was the worst in Colombia since February, when a suspected FARC bomb planted in a house exploded during a police raid, leveling a neighborhood and killing 15 people.