2 Admit Killing Galan, Bogota General Says

BOGOTA, Colombia —  Two captured men have confessed to killing a popular presidential candidate, the army says, and a congressional leader said he was contacted by Colombia’s two most notorious drug lords with a new offer to negotiate.

Bogota’s half a dozen daily newspapers quoted an army general Saturday as saying the army now knows who hired the alleged assassins of Sen. Luis Carlos Galan, whose Aug. 18 killing led the government to declare war on drug traffickers.

But Gen. Ramon Niebles did not disclose who ordered the killing, the newspapers said. Niebles made the statement Friday at a news conference.

The general was quoted as saying that the two men who confessed to killing Galan were part of a band called the Blackies.

The two men were captured Thursday in a Bogota house where the army found weapons, ammunition and 220 pounds of dynamite, the general said.

Twice before, police have said they captured Galan’s killers--once five men, and once 11 men. Both times the suspects were released after a few days.

Meanwhile, the president of Colombia’s House of Representatives, Norberto Morales, told a news conference in Medellin that he was telephoned by Pablo Escobar and Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, kingpins of the infamous Medellin cartel.

Morales said Escobar and Rodriguez Gacha offered to invest millions of dollars in Colombian industry if a truce is reached. He said he had passed the information along to President Virgilio Barco Vargas, who has refused to conduct negotiations with the traffickers.