COLOMBIA COURT APPROVES EXTRADITION

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Colombia's Supreme Court on Friday approved a U.S.
request to extradite the suspected leader of a cocaine smuggling group
authorities say used to ship 30 tons of the drug to the United States every
month.

U.S. prosecutors say alleged drug kingpin Alejandro Bernal was a close
associate of Fabio Ochoa, a former Medellin cocaine cartel leader
extradited last month to stand charges in Florida for his suspected role in
the same ring.

The two were arrested along with dozens of other suspects in an October
1999 dragnet aided by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

Bernal is suspected of brokering cocaine shipments financed by Ochoa and
others and made with help from a Mexican cartel. The group was sending as
many as 30 tons a month at the time of the arrests, prosecutors charge.

Bernal faces a drug trafficking and money laundering indictment in federal
district court in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Colombia's Supreme Court said.

Colombian President Andres Pastrana is expected to approve Bernal's
extradition, the final government step before he can be handed over to U.S.
authorities. Bernal could still attempt legal appeals.

About three dozen Colombians have been extradited since Pastrana took
office in 1998, shortly after Colombia's congress reinstated the practice.
Extradition had been outlawed in a 1991 constitution amid violent
intimidation by the now-defunct Medellin cartel, led by Pablo Escobar.

Bernal is believed to be a former lieutenant of Escobar, who was killed by
police in 1993. But he is considered an example of Colombia's newer
generation of traffickers -- lower-profile, higher-tech, and less violent
than their predecessors.

Traffickers typically receive much stiffer sentences in the United States
than in Colombia, where corruption plagues the justice system. The South
American country is the world's largest cocaine producer.