WASHINGTON — Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, one of the Bush administration's most steadfast allies in South America, was allegedly a "close personal friend" of slain drug lord Pablo Escobar and worked for his Medellin cartel, according to a newly released U.S. military intelligence report.
The 1991 report by the Defense Intelligence Agency describes Uribe, then a rising star in Colombian politics, as "dedicated to collaboration" with the Medellin cartel, at the time the world's richest criminal organization and the source of most of the cocaine imported into the U.S.
The memo devotes a single paragraph to Uribe and his alleged narcotics involvement, listing him 82nd among 104 of the "more important Colombian narco-traffickers."
The allegations about Uribe, who was elected president in 2002, were strongly repudiated by the Colombian government, the State Department and the Pentagon.
All three described the memo, released to a nonprofit research group under a public records request, as uncorroborated information contradicted by Uribe's strong support for efforts to wipe out cocaine in Colombia and extradite drug suspects to the United States.
Under Uribe, Colombia's production of coca, the source of cocaine, has dropped by more than 50% through intense, U.S.-funded fumigation efforts, and more than 160 suspected drug traffickers have been indicted, U.S. defense officials said.
"We completely disavow these allegations against President Uribe," said Robert Zimmerman, a spokesman for the State Department's Western Hemisphere Affairs Bureau, which monitors Colombia. "We have no credible information that substantiates or corroborates the allegations."
News of the memo comes at a delicate time for Uribe, who is negotiating a peace deal with right-wing paramilitaries involved in drug dealing and is seeking a constitutional amendment to allow him to run for a second term in office.
The memo, which was made public today, appeared likely to resuscitate rumors about Uribe's controversial past, including his alleged connections with the drug trade. It also feeds perceptions of pervasive drug corruption in Colombia, which nearly felled former President Ernesto Samper in the 1990s, when it was discovered that his presidential campaign had received drug money.
"This is a very hard blow," said Daniel Garcia-Pena, a former Colombian government peace negotiator and left-leaning political analyst. "Being an official report from a U.S. agency, this is going to reopen a chapter that Uribe thought he'd closed. It's grave, grave."
