Today's Stories: Chile may probe ex-dictator's possible secret accounts Mexico ranks 53rd place in UNDP list US backs dialogue between govt, paramilitaries in Colombia Colombian ex-senator defends paying ransom

US Senate: American bank helped Pinochet hide millions  A US Senate committee has accused Riggs Bank of helping former Chilean leader August Pinochet hide money away. The bank have done this even after Pinochet was arrested. The American bank is said to have done this even after Pinochet was arrested in London in 1998 for crimes against humanity. At the time, a court ordered the freezing of his bank accounts. Friday's CRI online reported. According to the senate committee, Riggs Bank helped Pinochet move between four and eight million dollars from the United Kingdom to the United States over an eight-year period. As a cover, the accounts were put in the name of two businesses set up for that purpose. Riggs Bank said it was looking into the matter. Pinochet's sons dismissed the accusations as lies

Miami tops 'foreign-born' cities Miami has a big Cuban contingent Miami has the largest foreign-born population of any city in the world, a United Nations report says. Some 59% of people in the city were not born in the US, the UN Development Program report said. The city is home to many Cubans, as well as migrants from the Caribbean and South America. The report said Canada's Toronto had the second-highest proportion of foreign-born citizens (44%), while Los Angeles was a close third with 41%.

Lagos's statement came as a response to a US Senate report thatsaid a Washington-based bank, Riggs, helped Pinochet hide millionsof dollars when he was detained in United Kingdom in 1998.

According to The Washington Post, the US Senate investigators, who for more than one year examined the activities of Riggs Bank, said in a report on Wednesday that Riggs Bank sought business from Pinochet and set up multiple personal and corporate accounts to hide between 4 and 8 million dollars, violating US anti-money-laundering safeguards.

According to this report, the bank referred to Pinochet as a "retired pensioner" and with a "high-ranking position in the public sector for many years."

"We are all equal in the eye of the law," said Lagos to the press and affirmed that the only thing he knew about the accounts came from the version of The Washington Post, the principal newspaper of the United States, which was cited as a source of the report of the US Senate commission to investigate the activities of the Riggs bank.

"What I would really like to mention is that I am informed through the Embassy of Chile at the US capital of Washington that a Chilean official's participation has been requested in the inquires of the US Congress," he said.

Pinochet, 88, who took control of Chile by ousting constitutional president Salvador Allende in 1973, was arrested in London on Oct. 16, 1998 after Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon issued an arrest warrant to have him extradited to Spain for charges of torture, terrorism and genocide. He was later released on grounds of poor health.

He and his security agents face hundreds of charges of homicide,kidnapping and torture in Chile but none of corruption, despite Pinochet's owning a mansion in Santiago and at least four other properties in the country.

There have been several failed attempts to probe his finances by journalists or lawmakers since the 1980s.
 

Mexico ranks 53rd place in UNDP list
Mexico was ranked in the 53rd place in a UN Development Program (UNDP) list of the 55 countries with the highest human development.

For the second year in a row, Mexico appears in the UNDP list, in which Norway, Sweden and Australia, Canada and the Netherlands ranked as the best five countries to live, according to the UNDP Human Development Report 2004 released on Thursday.

The Human Development Index, prepared by the UNDP, is issued annually and includes every country for which statistics are available.

The UN report describes human development as both economic and political issue, including human rights and the strength of democracy.

Coordinator of the report Luis F. Lopez said although Mexico improved, the marked inequalities in the country still exist.

Rodolfo Stavenhagen and Lourdes Arizpe, who participated as consultants in the report, highlighted that Mexico remains one of the nations with greater internal socioeconomic inequalities.
 

US backs dialogue between govt, paramilitaries in Colombia
The United States on Thursday voiced support for dialogues between the Colombian government and the right-wing armed organization United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) but insisted on the extradition of the chiefs of this group.

US Ambassador to Colombia William Wood said Washington's support in the process is based on the AUC's definite abandonment of its drug-trafficking activities and attacks on civilians.

The US embassy would send a mission of four to meet with Presidential Peace Commissioner Luis Restrepo, in Monteria, capital of Cordoba state, in north Colombia to monitor the talks, he said.

Local authorities and the bishop of Monteria, Julio C. Vidal, would also take part in the meeting, he added.

Some Colombians expressed their concerns over the US calls for the extradition of AUC leaders, which they believe might block the way for its demobilization.

The AUC, mainly funded by landowners and drug dealers, was founded in April 1997 to fight left-wing guerrillas who also tried to control plantations and sales of coca leaves, the raw material for cocaine.

The group is responsible for the killing of hundreds of peasants, syndicate leaders and presumed guerrilla sympathizers.

The efforts to demobilize it started on July 1. If the peace talks end successfully, the AUC will turn into a political movement and its 20,000 members will be demobilized by 2005.

Colombia's four-decade-old civil war among government troops, leftist rebels, and right-wing paramilitaries claims about 3,500 lives every year, most of them civilians.
 

Colombian ex-senator defends paying ransom
A former Colombian senator defended his decision to pay a ransom to kidnappers holding his sons for three years, saying Thursday he could not bear to see them "slowly die in the jungle."

Jaime Lozada said he felt humiliated for giving in to the Marxist rebels who abducted his two sons and their mother from their luxury apartment three years ago. He also denounced the government for failing to ensure his family's safety.

"Paying a ransom is one of the most shameful things to do, but I have to put the unity of my family before ethical considerations," Lozada told The Associated Press from his home in the southern city of Neiva.

Lozada's sons, Juan Sebastian, 19, and Jaime Felipe, 20, were freed Tuesday at an undisclosed location in southern Colombia. His wife, Gloria Polanco, remains in captivity.

Lozada declined to say how much ransom he paid. Details on how the payment was made have not been disclosed.

A visibly shaken Juan Sebastian said on the steps of his former school in Neiva that being held for so long was "simply indescribable."

"It's the most treacherous, most inhumane, worst thing that could happen to a human being," he told reporters Wednesday.

Government and army leaders warned Thursday that paying ransoms to illegal groups would encourage them to kidnap more people and would provide them with funds to continue their armed struggle.

"If one day we want to put an end to kidnapping, society and the state must agree to a policy of never paying," Vice President Francisco Santos, who kidnapped by late drug kingpin Pablo Escobar in the 1980s, said Thursday.

But Lozada said the Colombian government "has no right to say, 'Don't pay.' The state has a duty to protect its citizens. They took my wife and children from their beds."

Rebels pretending to be police officers kidnapped the Lozada brothers, their mother and 13 others after storming a high-security apartment building in Neiva, 150 miles southwest of the capital, Bogota, on July 28, 2001.

It was the first time the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, took over an apartment building, breaking down doors and dragging away residents, shocking urban Colombians as a conflict fought mainly in the countryside suddenly made it to their doorstep.

Four of the people taken that night, including Lozada's wife, still are held.

The FARC separated Polanco from her sons six months after the kidnapping. In a video released by rebels last year, she tearfully pleaded to be reunited with them.

In 2002, Polanco was elected to congress and since has been included on a FARC list of dozens of "political prisoners" it says it will free in exchange for hundreds of jailed rebels.

That list also includes U.S. military contractors captured by rebels in February 2003 when their single-engine plane crashed in the south.

"There are only two ways for my wife and the Americans to be free: a prisoner exchange or a military rescue operation, which would be much too risky," Lozada said. "The government has to negotiate a deal."

However, Santos reiterated that the administration of hardline President Alvaro Uribe will not consider a prisoner swap unless any freed rebels agree to go abroad to ensure they cannot commit more crimes. The FARC has denounced such a move as unacceptable.

"It is not an impossible condition to meet and the truth is that we don't understand why the FARC has not showed a positive response," Santos said.

The FARC and a smaller rebel group have been battling to topple the government and establish a Marxist-style state in Colombia for 40 years in a conflict that claims an estimated 3,500 lives every year