By PAUL HAVEN

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) President Ernesto Samper said Wednesday he favors
reinstituting extradition of Colombian drug traffickers to prevent powerful
drug lords from using the country as a ``sanctuary.''

Samper told a commission of top justice officials that he would ask Congress
to remove the ban on extradition of Colombian citizens written into the 1991
constitution.

``No Colombian can ... make his homeland a sanctuary to avoid punishment for
crimes committed abroad or turn his country's justice system into a shield of
impunity to abet his crimes,'' Samper said in the letter.

If Congress removes the ban it could open the way for jailed kingpins like
Miguel and Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, the top leaders of the Cali drug
cartel, to be extradited to the United States, where they face charges and
possible life sentences.

The men are serving much lighter sentences in Colombia and enjoy special
treatment in jail.

Samper did not specifically say whether he supported retroactive extradition.
Justice Minister Carlos Medellin said that if the ban is removed, extradition
automatically would be retroactive.

The United States repeatedly has called for Colombia to reestablish
extradition.

But the process to amend the constitution is long and complicated. Congress
must take several votes over at least two legislative sessions to make the
change.

An effort to begin the amendment process failed in the corruptionplagued
Congress last year. Lawmakers included a clause that would have prevented
extradition from being applied retroactively to top jailed kingpins.

More than a dozen lawmakers are in jail, either convicted of accepting drug
money on facing trial on such charges.

Last year, Congress cleared Samper of charges he knowingly solicited millions
of dollars from the Cali drug cartel for his election campaign.

The ban on extradition was added to the constitution amid a decadelong
terror campaign waged by a group of Medellin cartel traffickers who referred
to themselves as ``The Extraditables.'' Thousands of people were killed.

The violence ended in 1993 when drug lord Pablo Escobar was slain and control
of the drug trade shifted to the lessviolent Cali cartel.

Last month, news organizations received a letter signed ``The Extraditables''
which threatened death for anyone who supports extradition. It is not clear
if the letter was authentic.

On Mar. 20, gunmen murdered Cali newspaper columnist Gerardo Bedoya, who had
been a vocal critic of drug corruption and supporter of harsher penalties for
traffickers.