Relationships with drug lords

Pablo was no friend of mine, Colombia's Uribe says

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, dogged throughout his career by rumors of cozy relationships with drug lords and right-wing paramilitaries, said on Monday that he was never a friend of the late cocaine king Pablo Escobar.

The statement came in response to a book published last month by Escobar's one-time lover saying that Uribe helped the former head of the Medellin cartel secure licenses for planes and landing strips used to transport cocaine.

The book, "Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar" by ex-Colombian model and news presenter Virginia Vallejo, goes on to say she heard Uribe refer affectionately to the feared drug baron as "El Patron," or "The Boss" in English.

Events described in the book took place in the 1980s when Uribe was a rising Medellin-based politician. He denied the accusations in a one-page statement.

"I was not a friend of Pablo Escobar, not even when it was fashionable to be," the statement said.

Escobar was shot dead on a Medellin rooftop in 1993. Uribe, whose government has received hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. anti-narcotics aid, was re-elected last year.

He is popular for cutting crime and spurring investment with his tough security policies. Critics say Uribe has given excessively soft treatment to paramilitaries who committed atrocities while helping the state fight leftist rebels.