(3 May 1997) Spanish/Nat
Senior Colombian officials on Saturday denied that President Ernesto Samper was involved in an assassination plot against an opposition politician in 1995.
The allegations were made by a Congressman in Bogota who said that a document from the prosecutor's office showed Samper ordered and paid for the assassination of the country's main opposition leader, Alvaro Gomez Hurtado.
The latest political storm involving Samper erupted as he was rounding off his official visit to South Africa as outgoing president of the Non-Aligned Movement.
Colombia will be passing on the chairmanship of the Non-Aligned Movement to South Africa in 1998.
To mark the occasion, President Ernesto Samper visited the country and - on Friday - he addressed the South African Chamber of Business in Johannesburg.
The president was accompanied by leading Colombian business leaders who used the opportunity to promote their country.
Samper himself took the chance to criticise Washington's decision - in February -
to decertify Colombia for not fully cooperating in the drug war.
SOUNDBITE: (Spanish)
'Certification is not the right path. No country has the right to certify another's conduct to establish goals or to establish priorities. What it's more serious is that certification is a mechanism of unilateral pressure that leads to the confrontation between countries in which drug traffickers go on freely due to the weakness of what should be a proposal of cooperation and not confrontation.'
SUPER CAPTION: Ernesto Samper, Colombian President
Decertification is not the only blemish on Samper's presidential record.
Opposition Congressman Pablo Victoria said on Friday that a document from the prosecutor's office showed Samper ordered and paid for the 1995 assassination of the country's main opposition leader Alvaro Gomez Hurtado.
SOUNDBITE: (Spanish)
I think that it is a very serious document, very delicate, and that it is necessary that the attorney general's office and the accusations commission of the House of Representatives - because this may reach the commission of the House of Representatives - thoroughly investigates this issue because I think it is too serious. This is the first time a witness comes out to accuse the President, this had never happened in Colombia.
SUPER CAPTION: Pablo Victoria, Congressman
According to Victoria, a lover of one of the alleged hitmen told investigators that Samper paid 100-thousand dollars to kill Gomez.
The opposition leader was murdered outside his Bogota office on November 2, 1995.
Top government officials - including the foreign minister - on Saturday denied that Samper was involved in the assassination plot.
Samper has not yet reacted to the allegations.
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