Colombia's Military Leaders Fired

INTERNATIONAL January 1995

Colombian President Ernesto Samper fired the country's military leadership and national police chief for not backing his efforts to make peace in a 30-year war with leftists rebels (Top Military Leaders Fired in Colombia," Dallas Morning News, Nov. 24, 1994, P. 78A).

General Octavio Vargas Silva, the national police chief, was the head of the search for Medellin leader Pablo Escobar. Escobar was killed in Dec. 1993. U.S. agents in Colombia suspect that Silva had conspired with leaders of Medellin's rival drug gang, the Cali cartel. Silva was replaced with Brig. Gen. Rosso Jose Serrano.

Heads of the navy, the army, and the air force were also fired.