A raid Monday by Judicial Investigating Organization agents turned into a shootout when a resident pulled a gun, a spokesman said.

The man with the gun died in the 2:30 p.m. confrontation in Tibás, the spokesman said, identifying him as Toleltino Rosero Casaras, 40, a Colombian national.

The raid was by the Sección de Delitos Contra Propiedad, which normally deals in burglaries and thefts.

Committee selected
to investigate Caja

President Abel Pacheco has arm twisted the board of directors of the Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social, and the board named a committee of four persons to investigate the massive social welfare institute.

The Caja is the provider of medical care for most Costa Ricans. It runs the hospitals and the clinics. The executive president was forced out last month due to his close relationship with a supplier. Since then, a number of unusual transactions have come to light.

"The government can’t name an investigating commission because that is not in my power," Pacheco said, noting that the Caja was an autonomous institution. So he asked its board of directors to pick four persons that he approved. The choices were announced at Casa Presidencial late Monday.

They are Hugo Picado Odio, a former magistrate of the Corte Suprema de Justicia; Rafael Carillo Lara, president of the Cámera de Industrias; Alvaro Fernández Salar, a former executive president of the Caja, and Federico Vargas Peralto, a former minister of Hacienda.

The commission will look into two multimillion dollar transactions that involved purchases from Finland and from Spain. And the group will see if there has been any unequal treatment by officials that would benefit any suppliers.

Horacio Solano, former medical director of the Caja who is now executive president, said that the committee would be set up today or tomorrow.

Eliseo Vargas Garcia, the former executive president, resigned under fire April 21 after the La Nación newspaper reported that he had rented a home from a manager of a major supplier to his public organization. 

Danilovich to talk
to business group

John J. Danilovich will give his last public speech as U.S. ambassador to Costa Rica Wednesday.

Appropriately, Danilovich will be speaking to the Costa Rican-North American Chamber of Commerce at a noon luncheon at the Hotel Marriott in San Antonio de Belén.

An announcement from the U.S. Embassy did not say what Danilovich would say in his talk.

President George Bush nominated him to be ambassador to Brazil. That nomination was sent to the U.S. Senate Feb. 26.

Danilovich, a Republican, is not expected to face much trouble in the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate. He is a businessman who was a political appointee to the Costa Rican post.

However, others in the English-language community here were surprised that Danilovich would be picked as emissary to the leftist government of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Three Cuban dissident leaders say they oppose new U.S. policies designed to speed Cuba's transition to democracy after leader Fidel Castro's death. 

In separate written statements issued Monday, dissidents Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo, Oswaldo Paya and Elizardo Sanchez Santacruz called the measures inappropriate. Sanchez described the action as "counter-productive meddling." 

Gutierrez is leader of a group known as Cuban Change. Sanchez runs the National Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation. Paya is chairman of the Varela Project. 

The men were responding to President Bush's announcement Thursday that he would direct nearly $60 million to be spent over two years to help "hasten the day" when "the Cuban people will be free." 

Bush plans to spend $18 million to broadcast from aircraft flying in international airspace and U.S. 

The United States also will tighten restrictions on the amount of cash that Cuban expatriates in the United States can send to relatives on their home island. In addition, the number of permitted expatriate visits with Cuban families will be reduced from once a year to once every three years. 

The proposals were made in response to 500 pages of recommendations submitted to the president earlier this week by the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba. 

President Bush created the study group, headed by Secretary of State Colin Powell, about six months ago to suggest ways the United States can help the Cuban people end Castro's dictatorship. The United States wants to undermine Castro's reported plans for his brother Raul to succeed him. 

Friday, the Cuban government said the U.S. proposals were cruel and a violation of human rights laws. 

CAPE TOWN, South Africa — The South African department of foreign affairs says former Haitian president Jean Bertrand Aristide has made a formal request to "visit South Africa until his personal situation normalizes." The cabinet will consider the request later this week and is expected to approve it. 

Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma issued a statement here announcing Aristide's request for an extended visit to South Africa. The former Haitian leader has been expected to make his way here ever since he fled Haiti in late February, following an armed revolt. 

But the foreign affairs department is emphasizing that the cabinet still has to decide whether to grant the request. Foreign Affairs spokesman Ronnie Mamoepa denied that the open-ended visit actually amounts to asylum. "No, there is no reference whatsoever, in the communiqué of the minister of foreign affairs, Dr. Dlamini-Zuma, for asylum. We have spoken about a request for a visit until his personal situation normalizes," he said. 

The issue was first raised shortly after Aristide left Haiti, when he initially took refuge in the Central African Republic. The South African government said it was willing to have him but never received a formal request until now. 

At the time, senior officials said they did not want him to arrive until after South Africa's general elections, which took place nearly a month ago. 

Several opposition parties have vocally opposed the idea of granting Aristide asylum in South Africa. But the ruling African National Congress has supported the idea in principle. 

The foreign affairs spokesman says the cabinet will take into account the views of CARICOM and the African Union, as well as South Africa's own domestic situation, in deciding whether to allow Aristide to visit. He said he cannot say when the trip might take place until the cabinet has made its decision.

BRASILIA, Brazil — A spokesman for Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva says an article published Sunday in a United States newspaper about the president's drinking habits was defamatory.

Presidential spokesman Andre Singer late Sunday also condemned The New York Times article as prejudicial. The published report said some Brazilians are worried that da Silva's consumption of alcohol is affecting his job performance.

The New York Times article reported speculation that what it called President da Silva's "apparent disengagement and passivity" in the face of repeated crises and corruption scandals might somehow be related to "his appetite for alcohol." 

BOGOTA, Colombia — The humanitarian crisis in Colombia is the worst in the Western Hemisphere, with two million people forced from their homes into slums without basic services. That's the word from the top U.N. emergency relief official, who just returned from a visit to the region. Large sections of Colombia are under the control of drug mafias, and off limits to aid workers.

U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland calls Colombia one of the world's forgotten humanitarian crises. With drug mafias and paramilitary groups battling the government for control of land for growing illegal coca crops, a million people have been driven from their homes in the past four years, doubling the total number displaced. 

Egeland says at one camp he visited last week outside the city of Cartagena, people were living in squalor, without water or sanitation services. "I just felt it was 10,000 people floating around in a sea of garbage and sewage and with some improvised housing where they had gotten or stolen building materials and put up themselves," he said.

Egeland says with so many people fleeing their traditional homeland, some of Colombia's indigenous tribes are in danger of extinction, their lands confiscated to make way for coca plantations. 

He said the world body would come up with a plan of action within a month to help alleviate the crisis. But he noted that large areas, where 

"I'm particularly concerned with 10 areas where Indian tribes and peasant communities are totally trapped without access by us, the international community, because the guerrillas don't allow entry, because the paramilitary forces don't allow our entry, or because the military offensives, campaigns make it impossible for us to get access," he said.

Egeland urged wealthy Colombians to do more to help the poor. He said in a country where the richest 10 percent have 50 times more wealth than the poorest 10 percent, the growing slum population has long-term implications.

"The crisis of the internally displacement is a crisis of security for Colombia, to have millions of young people together, the traditionally poor, as they call them, and the internally displaced, among them young people with no hope, no education, no feeling of having a future, will lead to massive new recruitment into guerrilla, into the paramilitary forces and into the drug mafias," he said.

Egeland noted that conditions in Colombia are complicated by the spread of land mines over the past few years in the coca-growing regions. He said Colombia is one of the few countries where the number of land mines is increasing.

Colombia's President, Alvaro Uribe, has made the war on the cocaine trade a cornerstone of his administration. The United States has earmarked $2.5 billion in aid to the Bogota government over the past four years to finance the campaign.

CARACAS, Venezuela — Authorities have captured at least 80 suspected Colombian paramilitary members allegedly plotting with Venezuelan dissidents to overthrow the government of President Hugo Chavez.

In a nationally broadcast address, Chavez said Venezuelan security forces arrested the Colombians Sunday in raids on a ranch outside the capital, Caracas. He is quoted as saying the raids eliminated what he called "the seeds of a terrorist group," and prove there is a conspiracy against his government. 

Venezuelan opposition leaders and the Colombian paramilitary group known as AUC — the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia — separately denied Mr. Chavez' allegations. 

Opposition leaders accuse the president of trying to distract attention from opposition efforts to hold a vote to recall Chavez from office. 

Venezuela's opposition this month must verify nearly one million signatures on a petition calling for a referendum on Chavez' rule. A court last month ruled that 800,000 of the more than three million signatures collected were fraudulent. 

A Colombian paramilitary leader, Salvador Mancuso, rejected Chavez' accusation that AUC is trying to overthrow the Caracas government, and denied his group is operating in Venezuela.

President Chavez survived a brief coup in 2002. The leftist leader has accused domestic opponents of trying to overthrow him with the help of the United States and Cuban exiles. 

Washington has strongly denied the allegations, however it has criticized Chavez for his close ties with Communist-ruled Cuba and its leader, Fidel Castro.

Chavez is a former Venezuelan army colonel and paratrooper who was jailed for two years after leading a failed coup attempt against the government of then-President Carlos Andres Perez in 1992. 

Chavez was elected president in a landslide victory a few years later after campaigning on a populist platform promising widespread economic and social reforms aimed at benefiting the nation's millions of poor people. 

Opponents accuse him of making sweeping political, judicial and constitutional changes to grab more power for himself and set up a Cuban-style dictatorship.

Colombian Marxist rebels and right-wing paramilitary groups both are suspected of operating across the border in Venezuela.