DRUG 'VICTORY' MAY BE DUBIOUS

BOGOTA, Colombia - The extradition of reputed drug boss Fabio Ochoa to
Miami - seen as a victory for U.S. drug agents - won't put a dent into the
world's flourishing cocaine trade, Colombia's top anti-drug lawman said
Saturday.

"There are millions of consumers and thousands of people willing to supply
that demand," Gen. Gustavo Socha, head of Colombia's anti-narcotics police,
said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Ochoa, who arrived in Miami early Saturday to face trial, was a leading
member of the Medellin cocaine cartel, which waged a war of terrorism in the
1980s and early 1990s to pressure the Colombian government to bar
extraditions to the United States.

The Medellin cartel had moved amateurish smuggling operations into the big
leagues, delivering tons of cocaine to the U.S. by plane.

But the cartel's heyday ended When its top leader, Pablo Escobar, was shot
to death by police in 1993. The smuggling landscape has since changed
dramatically, with no single gang being dominant.

The rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and their rightwing
paramilitary foes control the production of cocaine by protecting and taxing
clandestine processing labs and the farmers who grow cocaine-producing
crops.

The purified cocaine is then picked up by various smuggling groups for
shipment abroad. The system works well: Colombia has for years supplied more
than 80 percent of the world's cocaine. Despite strong cooperation in
antidrug efforts by President Andres Pastrana's government, no one has
managed to break the country's domination of the trade.

U.S.-backed anti-drug efforts, to be examined by Secretary of State Colin
Powell during a visit to Bogota on Tuesday and Wednesday, have had only
mixed success.

A decade ago, the extradition of Ochoa would have provoked a terrorist
backlash. Today, few expect a violent reaction.

"It would be very stupid for these narco-terrorists to do that," Socha said.
"The courts have bent over backward to accommodate Qchoa's legal rights."

Still, the State Department warned Americans in Colombia to take safety
precautions. The last attack thought to be in response to the government's
extradition policy was in November 1999 when a bomb exploded in Bogota,
killing eight bystanders.

Some Colombians are upset that Ochoa, who is accused of belonging to a gang
that smuggled 30 tons of cocaine a month, was taken away for trial in the
United States.

Ochoa's sister, Martha Nieves Ochoa, said the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration made up the charges in reprisal for his refusal to work as an
undercover agent following his release from a Bogota prison in 1996.

"My brother emphatically refused to be part of that dirty game and is now
paying the price," she said in a telephone interview,