BOGOTA, May 15 (Reuters) - Colombian authorities sought to ward off a new political scandal on Tuesday after the government revealed police agents had illegally wiretapped state officials, opposition figures and journalists for years.

President Alvaro Uribe late on Monday was forced to replace his national police commander and the police intelligence chief who along with ministers said they had been unaware agents had carried out the clandestine operations.

Uribe was already under pressure over a growing probe linking some of his lawmaker allies to illegal paramilitaries that carried out massacres and murders in a dirty war against guerrillas until they demobilized under a peace deal.

Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said Uribe and his top commanders were unaware of the telephone bugging and sought to ease opposition fears they were targets of a campaign.

"Neither he, nor I, nor the government had any idea this was happening," Santos told reporters.

"This was not just against the opposition ... there were interceptions of government people, the opposition, journalists, in fact, a broad range of people," he said.

Uribe has received millions in U.S. aid to help quell a four-decade-old conflict fueled by drug trafficking. He has negotiated the disarming of 31,000 paramilitaries and jailed their commanders under a peace deal handing them short prison terms for giving up theirs guns and confessing to crimes.

But he is under fire from critics since more than 20 Congress members and former politicians have been arrested on charges they colluded with the paramilitary warlords before the peace deal when the militias controlled swathes of Colombia.

Rights groups say the scandal is unearthing the depths of paramilitary influence, but Uribe says the arrests prove that Colombian justice works and denies any links himself to the paramilitaries.

The wiretapping crisis broke on Sunday after a local magazine published a story about recorded conversations it said revealed jailed paramilitary leaders were organizing crimes from their cells in violation of their deal with Uribe.

Authorities said they were investigating whether the tapes were authentic and whether the paramilitary bosses had broken with their deal. If the accusations are proven, the paramilitaries could face justice in the United States.

AlertNet news is provided by