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Warlord says that voters pressured to support Uribe

Colombia's most feared paramilitary warlord said death squads under his command pressured voters to cast ballots for President Alvaro Uribe in 2002, prompting an angry response on Wednesday from the conservative leader.

Salvatore Mancuso, a top leader of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), acknowledged his group's support for Uribe in a closed-door court appearance on Tuesday, Omaira Gomez, a lawyer attending the proceedings said.

On Wednesday, Uribe denied the paramilitaries had any impact on his 2002 victory.

"It's the first time I've received news that the paramilitaries pressured people to vote for me," Uribe told RCN Radio on Wednesday. "In every state under paramilitary domination, I lost the elections, except for Magdalena state, where I won by 7,000 or 8,000 votes."

Mancuso is the architect of a 2003 peace deal with the government -- which has led to the demobilization of 31,000 fighters -- and the first major militia commander to testify under it.

Uribe, who was governor of Antioquia state where Mancuso's paramilitary bloc began consolidating its grip over much of northern Colombia in the late 1990s, said on Wednesday that he never had dealings with Mancuso.

"I saw Mancuso one or two times, but I have never been friends of the paramilitaries," said Uribe, who was re-elected in to another four-year term in May.

Uribe claimed his government was the first to subject the AUC to the rule of law.

"My only order has been to dismantle the paramilitary groups and for that reason their commanders are in jail," Uribe told RCN.

Mancuso and 58 other jailed paramilitary commanders risk extradition to the US on drug trafficking charges unless they reveal their crimes to prosecutors.

Gomez, a lawyer attending the proceedings on behalf of the victims of paramilitaries, said that Mancuso ordered his private army to support Uribe "because he thought the same ... and had the same ideological plan."
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