(Adds government and union figures for killings paragraph nine)

By Patrick Markey

BOGOTA, May 1 (Reuters) - Maria Alejandra's husband had just left the Colombian school where he organized a teachers' union when the gunman caught up with him. Seven years after he was felled by five bullets, she is still waiting for justice.

Such violence against Colombian labor activists will be under scrutiny on Wednesday when President Alvaro Uribe meets with U.S. Democrats in Congress seeking to convince them to approve a trade pact and more aid to fight guerrillas and drug traffickers.

"It is going on seven years and I know this will be lost to impunity," said Maria Alejandra, who asked that her real name not be used for fear for her safety.

Uribe is a key White House ally in Latin America, but he is under fire from critics at home and Democrats worried about continuing labor violence and a scandal tying some of his allies to illegal paramilitaries accused of atrocities.

The president will hold talks with the U.S. labor federation AFL-CIO and with Democratic leaders including House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Reps. Charles Rangel and Sander Levin, who want tough labor provisions.

About 4,000 union leaders, members and activists have been murdered in Colombia since the mid-1980s, more than in the rest of the world combined, the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center said in a report last year.

With billions of dollars in U.S. aid, Uribe has dramatically reduced violence by taking on drug-trafficking rebels and negotiating a peace deal to disarm thousands of illegal paramilitaries who once fought them.

Uribe says murders of labor activists have dropped sharply from five years ago when he first came to office vowing to confront the four-decade conflict. His attorney general now has 13 prosecutors assigned only to probe union killings.

The government reports 25 trade unionists were killed in Colombia last year, but labor organizations say 72 were murdered for their labor activities.

"We want to be able to say to the world that there are no union killings. We haven't got there yet, but we have achieved a lot," Uribe told Reuters in an interview on Monday.

TARGETED ACTIVISTS

Paramilitary death squads, who fought against guerrillas until they reached a peace deal with Uribe, often targeted union activists, charging they were rebel sympathizers.

Democrats, who won control of the U.S. Congress in November, have long pushed for changes in trade pacts, including an enforceable commitment to abide by labor standards.

But while they are also debating deals with Peru and Panama, Democrats say Colombia's accord is complicated by the Andean country's labor violence and the lack of convictions.

Levin, who chairs the House Ways and Means subcommittee on trade, said he expected discussions with Colombian officials will lead to congressional hearings.

Democrats are also watching Uribe's handling of the ongoing scandal and concerns from rights groups about the criminal influence of jailed paramilitary commanders.

Eight pro-Uribe lawmakers have been arrested in the probe into paramilitary links and his former security police chief was accused of passing labor leader names to death squads. He was released but remains under investigation.

"The government always shows off figures that have little to do with reality," Fabio Arias, acting head of the country's largest labor federation, Central Workers Union of Colombia, told Reuters. "We are still being threatened."

But analysts say while Democrats will try to put more conditions on aid to Colombia, the trade deal faces opposition in Democratic party ranks that goes beyond concerns over labor violence.

"The other part of the story is the refusal of the Bush administration and of the previous Republican leadership in Congress to seek any accommodation with the Democrats during the negotiations of the treaty," said Cynthia Arnson, director of Latin America Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center.

(Additional reporting by Adriana Garcia in Washington)

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