Colombia replaces foreign minister

BOGOTA, Colombia – Colombia’s president quickly named a new foreign minister Monday, hours after Maria Consuelo Araujo resigned amid a growing scandal linking the political establishment and far-right paramilitaries.\nPresident Alvaro Uribe appointed Fernando Araujo, who escaped from six-year rebel captivity just six weeks ago, to the Cabinet post. The two Araujos aren’t related.\n“The president of the republic informs his compatriots that he has designated as foreign minister Fernando Araujo Perdomo,” said a statement by the presidency.\nFernando Araujo, 51, escaped after six years as a hostage on Dec. 31 in the middle of a military attack on the guerrilla camp where he was held. He wandered for five days before finding help.\nAs foreign minister one of his main jobs will be to support the president’s policy of military rescues to free thousands of Colombians, and three U.S. defense contractors, held hostage. But Fernando Araujo previously has voiced opposition to military rescues, claiming they jeopardize the hostages’ lives.\nMaria 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.\nThe Supreme Court also recommended that federal prosecutors investigate her father, a former provincial governor, federal lawmaker and agriculture minister, in the kidnapping case.\n“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,” she said in her resignation statement, which she read at a brief news conference.\nHer 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 five-decade civil conflict and much of its cocaine trade.