ALLEGED HEROIN DEALER ARRIVES IN NY

An accused heroin trafficker arrived in New
York yesterday on a U.S. government plane from Bogota, Colombia,
marking the first time in nearly a decade that Colombia has turned
over one of its nationals to stand trial in the United States.

The handover of 30-year-old Jaime Orlando Lara to the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration comes 10 days after a deadly terrorist bomb
exploded in Bogota in what many suspected was a warning against
extraditions.

Lara arrived in New York early yesterday, said Herb Haddad, a
spokesman for U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White. He appeared in a Manhattan
federal court yesterday and was held without bail. His attorney,
Richard Lind, said Lara would enter a not-guilty plea at his
arraignment tomorrow.

President Andres Pastrana defiantly signed Lara's extradition papers
just hours after the explosion Nov. 11, which killed eight bystanders
in an upscale shopping district.

"In compliance with that executive decision, this citizen was
transferred . . . to the United States," judicial police director Gen.
Ismael Trujillo said at a Bogota air base from which Lara left Sunday
morning on a DEA plane for Miami and then New York.

Lara was indicted in New York in October, 1998. Prosecutors say he
headed a smuggling ring that shipped as many as 30 pounds of heroin to
the United States on commercial flights and distributed it through New
York, Houston and Miami.

Colombia exports 80 percent of the world's cocaine and is a rising
heroin supplier to the U.S. market.

Acting on a U.S. request, police captured Lara in Bogota last
December. He was among 50 drug suspects awaiting extradition to the
United States. At least 30 of those are Colombians.

Colombia banned extradition in 1991, capitulating to a wave of
bombings and assassinations by the now-defunct Medellin drug cartel
and its notorious leader, Pablo Escobar. This month's bombing revived
memories of that era, although investigators have not blamed it on
drug traffickers.

Under heavy pressure from Washington, Colombia reinstated extradition
in December, 1997. Lara is the first Colombian sent abroad since the
reinstatement.