Massive drug seizure in Colombia

Marines found the drugs in a boat in the jungle

By Jeremy McDermott BBC correspondent in Bogota

Colombian troops have seized four tonnes of cocaine worth $120m on the country's Pacific coast.

Uribe: No apologies for tough measures

A naval patrol vessel bristling with marines found the drugs, vacuum-packed and ready to be shipped to the United States, on a boat moored up against a river bank in the dense jungle at Cabo Manglares, 480km (300 miles) south-west of the capital, Bogota.

The authorities said the cocaine belonged to the right-wing paramilitaries of the United Self Defence Forces of Colombia, the AUC.

Earlier this week the AUC insisted it had cut all ties to the drugs trade.

UN speech

The seizure could not have been better timed as Colombian President Alvaro Uribe made an address to the United Nations in New York calling for international help in his war against Colombia's illegal armies and the drugs trade that finances them.

The haul was the perfect illustration for President Uribe's speech

He began by lamenting the deaths caused by the attacks of 11 September in the US.

Then he went on to say that Colombia suffered the same number of dead every month in terrorist attacks across the country.

He made no apologies for the severe security measures he had imposed in Colombia to boost his fight against the Marxist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries that dominate almost half of the country.

He called on nations to control their demand for the cocaine and heroin that Colombia grows in such abundance and to stem the flow into Colombia of arms and chemicals needed to process drugs.

With three of Colombia's warring factions on the US terrorism list and Colombian drugs flooding the US market, the Bush administration has already delivered hundreds of millions of dollars of aid.

But the rest of the world, particularly Europe, worries about Colombia's human rights record and will wait and see how Mr Uribe's war on the illegal armies shapes up before committing themselves.