INDEXU.S. NEWS ....................5A THE AMERICAS ...........4AOPINION ........................7A COMICS & PUZZLES ...6B

KIM JONG Il GETS A WARM WELCOME IN RUSSIA, 3A

IRAN REPORTEDLY SENTENCES TWO U.S. MEN TO 8 YEARS IN JAIL, 6A

DEFECTIONS RAMPANT IN CUBAN SPORTS,SPORTS FRONT

THE HIDDEN DANGERS IN SAFE INVESTMENTS, BUSINESS FRONT

MiamiHerald.com

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108TH YEAR I ©2011 THE MIAMI HERALD

In Libya, rebels pass Tripoli’s outer defenses

U.S. aid implicated in abuses of power in Colombia

BY KAREEM FAHIMNew York Times Service

ZAWIYAH, Libya — Libyan rebels advanced to the outskirts of Tripoli on Sunday, pushing past the city’s outer defense lines and vowing to combine forces with insurgents who have waged in-tense battles inside the city, the fi nal stronghold of Col. MoammarGadhafi .

Rebel troops approaching from the west claimed to have broken Gadhafi ’s “ring of steel” defense that had been positioned outside Tripoli on the road to Zawiyah, a strategic oil city now in rebel hands. Scores of rebels driving pickup trucks mounted with ma-chine guns raced toward Tripoli along the road Sunday afternoon and the front line by early evening reached the district of Janzour, one of the suburbs of the capital, rebel leaders said.

The rebels also captured a mili-tary base of the vaunted Khamis Brigade, where they had once ex-pected to meet fi erce resistance, seizing a cache of armaments there.

Inside Tripoli, protesters took to the streets and rebels within the city clashed with Gadhafi loyalists in several neighborhoods on Sun-day, opposition leaders and refu-gees from the city said. Fighting was heavy but there was no imme-diate indication that Gadhafi ’s con-trol of the capital had crumbled.

A rebel spokesman also said that they had opened a new line of at-tack on Tripoli at dawn on Sunday by sending boats from the port city of Misrata to link up with fi ghters in the city. It was not clear how many fi ghters were involved in that operation.

Gadhafi issued a new audio

TURN TO LIBYA, 2A•

BY KAREN DEYOUNG AND CLAUDIA J. DUQUEWashington Post Service

BOGOTA — The Obama ad-ministration often cites Colom-bia’s thriving democracy as proof that U.S. assistance, know-how and commitment can turn around a po-tentially failed state under terrorist siege.

The country’s U.S.-funded coun-terinsurgency campaign against a Marxist rebel group — and the civilian and military coordination behind it — are viewed as so suc-cessful that it has become a model for strategy in Afghanistan.

But new revelations in long-running political scandals under former President Alvaro Uribe, a close U.S. ally throughout his eight-year tenure, have implicated U.S. aid, and possibly U.S. offi cials, in egregious abuses of power and ille-gal actions by the Colombian gov-ernment under the guise of fi ghting terrorism and drug smuggling.

U.S. cash, equipment and train-ing, supplied to elite units of the Colombian intelligence service over the past decade to help smash cocaine-traffi cking rings, were used to carry out spying operations and

TURN TO COLOMBIA, 2A•

Syria’s Assad warns against military intervention

Wait! There’s another Texan in the GOP presidential race

BY ZEINA KARAMAssociated Press

BEIRUT — Syria’s President Bashar al Assad said Sunday his re-gime was in no danger of collapse and warned against any foreign military intervention in his coun-try as the regime tries to crush a 5-month-old popular uprising.

In his fourth public appearance since the revolt against his family’s 40-year rule began in mid-March, Assad insisted his forces were mak-ing inroads against the uprising.

“It may seem dangerous . . . but in fact we are able to deal with it,” he told state-run TV in a 40-minute interview. It was the fi rst time he has agreed to take any questions, although the state-owned network is a mouthpiece for the regime.

The Syrian leader has come un-der mounting criticism over the brutal military offensive that has used tanks, snipers and gunboats to try to crush the uprising. Most recently, the United States and its European allies on Thursday de-

manded he step down. Late Sat-urday, former ally Turkey called Syria’s situation “unsustainable.”

Human rights groups and wit-nesses accuse Syrian troops of fi r-ing on largely unarmed protesters and say more than 2,000 people have been killed.

In the interview, Assad also said he expected a parliamentary elec-tion to be held in February 2012, along with a series of reforms that would let political groups other than his Baath party to participate.

Assad’s remarks were unlikely to have much resonance with Syria’s opposition, which says it has lost all confi dence in Assad’s overtures for reform while his security forces open fi re on peaceful protesters.

The interview was similar in tone and contents to other speech-es he has given in the past few months in which he tried to por-tray confi dence, stressing Syrian sovereignty and insisting the un-rest was being driven by a foreign conspiracy.

BY RICHARD S. DUNHAMHouston Chronicle

WASHINGTON — You might not know it by the media coverage, but there are two candidates from Texas in the Republican presi-dential fi eld. One fi nished sixth in Iowa’s Republican straw poll last week with 4 percent of the vote. The other fi nished second with 28 percent.

The guy who fi nished just 1 percentage point behind winner Michele Bachmann was not Rick Perry, the newest entrant in the 2012 White House race.

It was Rep. Ron Paul, the liber-tarian lawmaker from Lake Jack-son, Texas, and third-time presi-dential contender.

While Texas’ tough-talking gov-ernor soaked up the media spot-light, the cerebral Paul continued to plug away as the outsiders’ outsider in the 2012 presidential campaign. The 75-year-old congressman with the message of less government and more liberty has quietly built the largest grassroots network in the Republican fi eld, far larger than the team thus far assembled by his home state’s governor.

And although he gets precious little attention on the TV news net-works — and is dismissed by polit-ical pundits as a libertarian “niche” candidate without broad appeal — the former track runner has been

TURN TO PAUL, 2A•

MOHAMED HOSSAM/AFP-GETTY IMAGES

Egyptian protesters burn an Israeli flag during a demonstration outside the Israeli embassy in Cairo.

Deaths of Egyptian troops test peace treaty with IsraelBY IAN DEITCH AND MAGGIE MICHAELAssociated Press

JERUSALEM — The death of Egyptian soldiers caught in a battle between Israeli troops and Palestinian militants is testing the two nations’ landmark 1979 peace treaty, just as a sudden spike in violence threatens to trigger a full-scale confl ict between Israel and Gaza militants.

Tensions seemed to ease on Sunday, when a senior Hamas offi cial said Gaza militants had agreed to a cease-fi re with Israel.

Hamas security personnel would enforce the agreement bro-kered by Egypt, the offi cial said, adding that Egypt told the groups that Israel would agree to halt its airstrikes only if the Palestinians stopped the rocket fi re fi rst.

A spokesman for Israel’s gov-ernment would not comment, and it was not clear if the cease-fi re would take effect or hold.

Earlier Sunday, a salvo of rock-ets from Gaza struck an empty school and sent thousands of Is-raelis into bomb shelters. Israel responded with airstrikes and diplomats scrambled to limit the violence.

Some of the diplomatic ef-forts were aimed at limiting the damage from the deaths of the three Egyptian police. On Sunday morning, an Israeli envoy arrived at Cairo’s international airport and was whisked off in a convoy of four waiting cars, airport of-fi cials said. Israel’s government

TURN TO RELATIONS, 2A •

AMR NABIL/AP

A protester demonstrates near the Israeli Embassy in Cairo.

Rep. Ron Paul meets withsupporters in Concord, N.H.

JIM COLE/AP

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