BOGOTA, Colombia, Nov 22 (Reuters) - Colombian President Alvaro Uribe on Saturday accused a police unit of having such close ties to ring-wing paramilitary death squads that they went drinking together.

"The mayor tells me, the townspeople tell me, 'Look, the police don't leave town. And (outside) there are the guerrillas, and the police stay in town drinking whiskey with the paramilitaries,'" Uribe said at community meeting in the city of Rionegro, in his home province of Antioquia.

"We cannot allow this."

Uribe's televised tongue-lashing came three days before the scheduled demobilization of some 800 paramilitary gunmen, the first step in the planned dismantling of the 13,000-member United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia.

"And within eyeshot of the police, the paramilitaries (were) charging protection money from the city's businesses," Uribe added, calling such collusion a "mortal sin."

The paramilitaries are blamed for the deaths of thousands of people in a dirty war against Marxist rebels and have been branded terrorists by the United States, which is seeking top paramilitary bosses on drug trafficking charges.

"The public forces cannot enter into collusion, neither with the paramilitaries or the guerrillas," Uribe said.