Colombia's president backs top aides accused of paramilitary links
Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe Wednesday made a public statement in support of Vice President Francisco Santos and Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos, who have been accused of links with the nation's paramilitaries.

"I trust the vice-president's morality and that of my colleagues in government," Uribe said.

"Juan Manuel Santos is not a newcomer and the country knows that he is an honorable man," he added.

Salvatore Mancuso, one of the bosses of the now-demobilized United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), had accused the two Santoses, relatives in a family that owns one of Bogota's most influential daily newspapers.

Uribe said he has full confidence in the two and that they will remain in his cabinet.

Addressing the Peace and Justice Commission Tuesday, Mancuso said Francisco Santos had encouraged him to create the AUC's Capital Bloc, and asked AUC chiefs to help bring down then President Ernesto Samper.

In an uneasy interview with the media, Juan Manuel Santos said his meetings with the AUC were part of the efforts to bring about peace with the paramilitaries.

Former President Samper said in a separate interview that the news matches the reports he had heard earlier that Juan Manual had held clandestine meetings, seeking to prepare the ground for a transitional government via an accord with illegal armed groups, both left and right.

The AUC demobilized its 31,000-strong troops as part of a peace process agreed with Alvaro Uribe during his first term in office.

Confessions by AUC bosses of links to top government officials have roiled Colombia's political circle in the so-called para-political scandal for much of this year.