By Tom Brown

BOGOTA, Sept 12 (Reuter) The hardline general recently ousted as
Colombia's military chief called the government a disgrace and described
its war against drugs as ``a sham'' during an explosive television
interview.

Gen. Harold Bedoya, who has embarked on a grassroots campaign for the
presidency, also vowed to press drug corruption charges against
President Ernesto Samper if he wins election.

The interview, with CBSTelenoticias, was broadcast on Thursday night,
on the eve of a ceremony in the capital where Bedoya was to be retired
from active service with full honors.

Coming from a man who served on the frontline of the drug war, he was
guaranteed to stir controversy by calling it a fraud. But he put the
blame squarely on Samper, who he said should have resigned amid the
scandal over his allegedly drugfinanced election campaign.

``He's still doing Colombians a lot of harm by staying in power,''
Bedoya said, adding that Samper had made Colombia the target of ``world
opprobrium'' because of his image abroad.

``The (Samper) government has never had the political will to fight drug
trafficking and it doesn't have it now. What's being done in the fight
against trafficking is a sham,'' he said.

Bedoya stopped short of raising old charges that Samper had made a pact
with the Cali drug cartel, before his election in 1994, to be
deliberately ``soft'' on drugs.

But he noted that the government has been slow in winning passage of a
law that would lift Colombia's ban on the extradition of drug lords and
other criminals and said farms growing opium poppy and coca, the raw
material for cocaine, were spreading like wildfire especially in the
rebelcontrolled areas of southern Colombia.

Washington blacklisted, or decertified, Colombia's drug efforts for a
second consecutive year in February in a move criticized by Bedoya and
other top military men at the time. In the interview. Bedoya said the
decision was understandable, however, since Samper was ``linked from the
very beginning to drug money.''

Samper was cleared by Congress last year of charges that he knowingly
received about $6 million in Cali cartel drug money to finance his 1994
campaign. Bedoya dimissed the congressional trial as a whitewash and
said he would ``puruse it to its last consequences'' if elected
president next May.

Bedoya, who stressed he has ``many friends'' in Washington, including
the State Department and office of U.S. drug czar Barry McCaffrey, is
tipped by many analysts to be a leading contender in Colombia's
fledgling presidential sweepstakes.

He is accused of serious human rights abuses by local and international
human rights groups, but he denies any wrongdoing.

He was dimissed after publicly ridiculing the government's call for
peace talks with Marxist rebels who he said were bent on ramming ``the
law of the jungle'' down Colombia's throat. REUTER

17:45 091297