By Hugh Bronstein

BOGOTA, April 2 (Reuters) - Colombia on Monday denied a request from jailed right-wing militia leaders to campaign for candidates in local elections, saying the once-feared warlords are barred from politics and must stay in prison.

Fourteen of about 60 paramilitary bosses jailed near the city of Medellin had asked permission to campaign in their cental and northern hometowns on behalf of gubernatorial and mayoral candidates in October's elections.

"The president does not think it would be viable for them to leave jail," Colombian Peace Commissioner Luis Carlos Restrepo told local radio.

The decision comes amid a scandal in which eight of President Alvaro Uribe's congressional allies were jailed on suspicion of colluding with paramilitaries guilty of some of the worst atrocities of the Andean country's four-decade guerrilla war.

Uribe remains highly popular in Colombia but revelations of paramilitary influence in his government risk damaging his standing abroad.

Democrats in control of the U.S. Congress say Colombia must improve its human rights record as a condition of continuing military aid and approval of a free trade deal.

The paramilitaries were organized in the 1980s to help protect property from left-wing rebels. By the late 1990s, the conflict had become little more than a turf war over cocaine smuggling routes in which thousands are killed every year.

Most paramilitary chiefs, who once bragged they controlled a third of Colombia's Congress, have turned in their guns over the last three years as part of a peace deal in which they and 31,000 of their fighters surrendered in exchange for benefits including reduced jail terms.

But human rights groups say the paramilitaries have not dismantled their extortion and drug smuggling networks, while the government admits that thousands of former militia fighters have regrouped into new crime gangs.

Even if militia leaders are not allowed to openly control local elections, as they did before demobilization, they are expected to let their voting preferences be known.

"They still have their cell phones and personal computers with Internet access," said political commentator Ricardo Avila. "So they will exert a good deal of influence anyway."

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