Colombian group denies kidnapping backpackers

SIERRA NEVADA DE SANTA MARTA, Colombia -- Colombia's main rebel group denied responsibility for the abduction of eight foreign tourists, saying the military did it with plans of staging a dramatic rescue.

The eight backpackers -- four Israelis, two Britons, a German and a Spaniard -- were snatched at gunpoint Friday from cabins in the archaeological ruins of Ciudad Perdida, or the Lost City, high in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, said in the communique posted on its Web site Tuesday that "Colombian military intelligence" had carried out the pre-dawn kidnapping "to show results" to President Alvaro Uribe.

Colombia's ambassador to Israel, David Delarosa, gave the FARC statement no credibility, but expressed confidence the kidnapping drama would end well.

BBC reporter in weapons case acknowledges errors

LONDON -- A British Broadcasting Corp. reporter acknowledged Wednesday that he made several errors in a report that accused the government of "sexing up" an intelligence dossier on Iraq and set off a fierce dispute with the government.

BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan apologized to a judicial inquiry for indirectly identifying his source, biological weapons expert David Kelly, to a member of Parliament. Kelly apparently killed himself shortly after being publicly identified as the official quoted in the report.

Gilligan also said he was wrong to attribute particular phrases in the report to his then-unidentified single source. He acknowledged that he should have run the story by Prime Minister Tony Blair's office before broadcast.

In his May 29 broadcast, Gilligan said that one of the officials in charge of drawing up the dossier on Iraqi weapons alleged that Blair's office inserted a claim that Iraq could deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes' notice, when it knew the information was wrong.

Gilligan, speaking to the inquiry into Kelly's death, said Wednesday that he had made a slip of the tongue during a live broadcast when he said, referring to the 45-minute claim, that the government "probably knew it was wrong."

U.N.: Colombia's coca cultivation sees big drop

BOGOTA, Colombia -- A massive U.S.-financed fumigation campaign of cocaine-producing crops has hit Colombia's illicit drug industry hard, cutting coca cultivation by one-third in seven months, a U.N. report said Wednesday.

The Colombian government hailed the report by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime as evidence that the aggressive eradication efforts are working.

The results are "extraordinarily encouraging and positive," the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

But the United Nations also warned that production of coca, the raw material for cocaine, was rapidly expanding in other South American countries, notably Peru and Bolivia.

Guinea-Bissau's ousted president to cede power

BISSAU, Guinea-Bissau -- Guinea-Bissau's elected leader formally ceded power Wednesday before the eyes of West African envoys, who couldn't coax the military junta into giving up control it grabbed three days before in a bloodless coup.

Cheering crowds marched in the capital of this impoverished coastal West African country to celebrate President Kumba Yala's overthrow. He had become deeply unpopular in his four years in office, presiding over a government so poor it cannot pay its own civil servants.

"We don't need Yala here. We need Yala out of Guinea-Bissau," said Maria Lopes, 47, among the cheering, chanting marchers.

Foreign ministers of six West African nations gathered in his tin-roof, single-story private home to watch him sign the document surrendering authority. Yala is being held there under house arrest and is not free to move or speak freely.

Looking sad and solemn, Yala taped a departure speech, urging new elections and calling on the military to stay out of a transition government expected to be set up soon.

-- From wire reports