By Hugh Bronstein

BOGOTA, July 25 (Reuters) - The architect of the effort to allow Colombian President Alvaro Uribe to run for a third term in 2010 was arrested on Friday on charges of using paramilitary death squads to intimidate voters.

Sen. Carlos Garcia, head of Uribe's main coalition party, was seized in a hotel in the Caribbean resort city of Santa Marta. He was the 31st politician to be jailed in a scandal over links between the paramilitaries and lawmakers.

Thirty other members of Congress, most from Uribe-friendly parties, are under investigation over links to the right-wing militias formed in the 1980s to help cattle-ranchers, cocaine smugglers and other wealthy Colombians combat leftist rebels.

Garcia is president of the Party of National Social Unity, or "Partido de la U", which is the main political force pushing to let Uribe run for a third term to carry on his popular fight against Marxist guerrillas fighting a 44-year-old insurgency.

The Supreme Court ordered Garcia's arrest.

"The accusation against the senator is that he used paramilitaries to help win elections and consolidate power in his home province of Tolima," a spokesman for Colombia's attorney general's office told Reuters.

Uribe, the closest ally of the United States in Latin America, is leaving open the option of running again in 2010, and polls say he would easily win.

But Colombia's scandal-hit Congress would first need to approve a referendum vote on whether to amend the constitution to allow him to seek an unprecedented third term. The law was already changed once to allow his 2006 re-election.

"It is good that the Supreme Court, despite President Uribe's huge popularity, has the courage to keep enforcing the rule of law," said Jose Miguel Vivanco, Americas Director for New York-based Human Rights Watch.

Uribe's cousin and long-time political ally, Mario Uribe, is in jail awaiting trial for alleged illegal dealings with paramilitaries in the family's home province of Antioquia.

"If these politicians who have been so close to the president are convicted, the question will be whether they could have been involved with the paramilitaries without Uribe's knowledge or approval," Vivanco said. (Reporting by Hugh Bronstein; editing by David Storey)

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