By Hugh Bronstein

BOGOTA, Jan 24 (Reuters) - A retired Colombian general was arrested on Thursday along with other members of a gang accused of smuggling 10 tonnes of cocaine a month through neighboring Venezuela en route to the United States and Europe.

Colombian police said they arrested 23 members of the group in 11 cities across the Andean country.

Among them were former Gen. Pauselino Latorre, who once commanded army brigades in the city of Cali, and his nephew Leobardo Latorre, a former anti-drug prosecutor who police say bribed officials to try to resolve the group's legal problems.

The raid came as U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Medellin with nine congressional Democrats she is trying to convince to back a Colombian free trade pact.

Democrats have blocked the deal over human rights concerns along with a scandal linking government officials and some of conservative President Alvaro Uribe's political allies to right-wing paramilitary death squads funded by cocaine.

The paramilitaries were formed in the 1980s to help wealthy Colombians, and some sectors of the army, combat rebels.

The White House is pushing the trade deal as a reward for its ally Uribe, who has battled Marxist insurgents onto the defensive and is in a diplomatic row with Hugo Chavez, the anti-American firebrand leader of Venezuela.

The Latorre gang ran cocaine laboratories near Venezuela and was linked to new crime groups made up of former paramilitaries who demobilized in a government peace plan meant to reduce violence related to Colombia's guerrilla war.

"They used Venezuela as a bridge" to get drugs to European and U.S. markets, Attorney General Mario Iguaran said.

U.S. officials have accused Venezuela's government of not cooperating with anti-narcotics efforts. Chavez shocked Colombia earlier this month by saying the cocaine-funded rebels have a legitimate cause. He also called Uribe a "U.S. pawn".

Colombia is the world's top exporter of cocaine with about 600 tonnes of the drug leaving its shores every year, despite large amounts of U.S. aid aimed at cracking down on the trade. (Reporting by Hugh Bronstein, editing by Todd Eastham)

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