EXTRADITION OF KEY CARTEL FIGURE MAY NOT DAMPEN COCAINE TRADE

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- The extradition of reputed drug boss Fabio Ochoa
to Miami -- seen as a victory for U.S. drug agents -- won't put a dent in
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," said Gen. Gustavo Socha, head of Colombia's anti-narcotics
police.

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.

"It sends a message that everybody's held accountable," Drug Enforcement
Administration spokesman Joe Kilmer said.

Kilmer said Ochoa faces a bail hearing Monday, and the government will ask
for pretrial detention.

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

But the cartel's heyday ended when its top leader, Pablo Escobar, was shot
and killed by police in 1993. The smuggling landscape has since changed
dramatically, with no single gang dominating.

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

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
anti-drug 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, which will 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 Ochoa'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 in Bogota exploded,
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 to the United States
for trial.

"Every person has a right to be tried in their own country," said Giovanna
Debia, while shopping at an upscale mall in Bogota.

Ochoa's sister, Martha Nieves Ochoa, said the DEA 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 from Medellin. Two of Ochoa's brothers were
also members of the Medellin cartel, and served time in Colombia.

"Everything will boil down to the fairness of the American justice system
in how it treats someone who has been labeled a Colombian drug lord,"
Ochoa's attorney, Jose Quinon, told The Miami Herald.

In 1991, Fabio Ochoa was the first major Colombian trafficker to surrender
in return for a promise that he would not be extradited. But U.S.
prosecutors say Ochoa resumed transporting cocaine after leaving a
Colombian jail in 1996. He was arrested in 1999 along with dozens of other
suspected traffickers in a joint DEA-Colombian police operation.

U.S. anti-drug efforts are focused mainly on the fumigation of crops of
coca and of poppy, from which cocaine and heroin are made. Pastrana said
last week that U.S. aid in the interdiction of drug smuggling flights
should be resumed. The program was suspended in April following the
accidental shooting down of a U.S. missionary flight over neighboring Peru.