Colombian paramilitary faction wants separate talks with government 
The Metro Block, a dissident factionof Colombia's right-wing paramilitary group the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), has asked for separate peace talks with the government. 

In an interview published Monday by the daily El Tiempo, the 1,500-member faction's commander, known as "Rodrigo" or "Double Zero," said he had proposed, in a letter to the government, an independent peace negotiation with the government to have its own space to express "more widely" its viewpoints on peace. 

In mid-July, the Colombian government and the AUC signed an agreement on disarming the 13,000-member AUC, Colombia's largest paramilitary group, by the end of December 2005. 

The Metro Block claimed that it is prepared to accept the peaceprocess, but not under the same conditions as the AUC's, because it has economic interests that have been affected by those of drugtraffickers. 

Rodrigo said the AUC has been corrupted by drug trafficking, adding that between the AUC and the left-wing guerrilla organization Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, certain drug-trafficking businesses have been carried out. 

The AUC, established in the 1980s by drug traffickers and land owners to fight leftist guerrillas in areas where government troops exercise little control, has been active in northeast Colombia, particularly in the states of Antioquia and Cordoba. 

The AUC demobilization process will help ease a four-decade-oldcivil war in the country, the longest in Latin America, which claims about 3,500 lives every year. 

New York uses DNA to skirt limitation statute in sex crimes 
New York will become the first city in the United States to make rape indictments based solely ona DNA profile before a suspect is even identified, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Monday. 

If an individual is eventually arrested and linked to the crimeby DNA evidence, the suspect will go on trial, regardless of how much time has elapsed, Bloomberg said. Under state law, indictments cannot be made in crimes more than 10 years old. 

"We're going to get you," the mayor said at the announcement atManhattan's Bellevue Hospital. "The Police Department and the entire criminal justice system -- the district attorneys, the courts, the medical examiner, everybody we are not going to walk away. We are going to find you and bring you to trial," he said. 

That means a sex offender from whom physical evidence was once obtained and stored, but who was never identified by name, may be tried at any time should authorities obtain matching DNA. 

New DNA will be routinely "matched" against a database of old evidence, officials said. Inmates convicted of felonies now must submit DNA samples, so the pool of possible bases is growing. 

Thanks to a 350,000-US dollar federal grant for the "John Doe Indictment Project," a dedicated team of prosecutors, scientists and investigators will analyze cases nearing the statute of limitations and file indictments when a DNA profile of the perpetrator can be established. 

Announcing the project at Bellevue Hospital Center's DNA databank, Bloomberg deplored the fact that a number of cases solved by this recent technology have to be dropped because of thelimitation statute. 

The city and district attorneys said they had failed for three years to get state lawmakers to revise what they deem an outdated limitation statute. 

Limitation statute is a law which specifies the length of time during which legal action may be taken on a legal question or crime. 

UN members urged to freeze, transfer assets of former Iraqi govnt 
The acting governor of Iraq's Central Bank has asked the UN Security Council to urge all governments to identify, freeze, and promptly transfer funds and assets of the former Iraqi government to the Development Fund for Iraq. 

In a letter released here Monday, Faleh Dawod Salman, the bank's acting head, reminded the council of Resolution 1483 it adopted in May on the reconstruction of post-war Iraq. 

The resolution "creates an obligation for all member states to identify, freeze, and immediately transfer to the Development Fundfor Iraq, all funds, financial assets, or economic resources in their jurisdictions that were established or held by the previous government of Iraq," he noted. 

The provision also covers funds, assets and resources held by the Saddam Hussein regime's corporations, agencies, senior officials and their immediate family members, he said. 

"These funds are urgently needed for humanitarian, reconstruction, civilian administration, and other purposes benefiting the people of Iraq," he stressed. 

Salman said the central bank has established an account for the Development Fund for Iraq at the United States Federal Reserve Bank of New York to allow other nations to hand over frozen assets. 

"I respectfully ask that you urge all member states to transferIraqi assets in their jurisdictions to this account without delay," he said in the letter, which was dated July 31 and addressed to the Security Council president. 

The letter, with a cover note from US Civil Administrator for Iraq Paul Bremer III, was conveyed by US Ambassador John Negroponte. 

In the note, Bremer called the identification of foreign Iraqi assets, and the transfer of these assets to the Development Fund for Iraq as a "critical" part of Iraq's economic reconstruction and the occupying Coalition Provisional Authority's efforts to assist the Iraqi people. 

Resolution 1483 authorized the creation of the Development Fund for Iraq to manage Iraq's oil revenues after the phaseout of the oil-food program, and take over the former government's assets abroad. The right to disburse money from the fund lies with the occupying coalition.