Colombia minister resigns as paramilitary scandal grows

Colombian Foreign Minister Maria Consuelo Araujo announces her resignation Monday. Her brother has been jailed on charges of colluding with the country's paramilitaries.

BOGOTA, Colombia

Colombia's foreign minister resigned Monday as an ever-growing scandal linking the political establishment and far-right paramilitaries claimed its first member of President Alvaro Uribe's Cabinet.

Maria Consuelo Araujo announced her resignation four days after her brother, a senator, was jailed on charges of colluding with the paramilitaries and the kidnapping of a potential political rival.

The Supreme Court also recommended that federal prosecutors investigate Araujo's father, a former provincial governor, federal lawmaker and agriculture minister, in the kidnapping case.

"I clearly see the need for the judicial process to be free of interference, and my certainty in the innocence of my father and my brother obliges me to have the freedom to stand by them and support them," Araujo said in her resignation statement, which she read aloud in a brief news conference.

Her brother, Sen. Alvaro Araujo, was one of five politicians arrested Thursday, bringing to eight the number of federal lawmakers jailed for allegedly backing and benefiting at the ballot box from brutal intimidation by the militias, which are responsible for some of the worst massacres in Colombia's civil conflict and much of its cocaine trade.

Uribe initially had stuck by Araujo, whom he named foreign minister six months ago, and she had said Friday that she would continue in the job. But concerns had grown that Colombia's international image is being tainted by her family's alleged close ties with banned paramilitaries -- her cousin, governor of her home state of Cesar, is also under investigation.

The resigning foreign minister is married to an AP photographer.

In the burgeoning scandal, more than 60 federal and regional politicians -- almost all from the Caribbean coast -- are being questioned by the Supreme Court. The opposition is calling for early congressional elections, claiming the infiltration by the paramilitaries is so great that the legislative body has lost credibility.

All of the arrested are close political allies of Uribe, who despite the scandal remains immensely popular for having tamed violence in Colombia's major cities and highways since he was first elected in 2002.

The paramilitary bosses surrendered last year under a government peace deal that promises reduced sentences in exchange for confessing crimes and surrendering ill-gotten gains.

More than 31,000 fighters laid down their weapons, although new groups have formed in the past year.