COLOMBIA EXTRADITES DRUG SUSPECT TO U.S.

BOGOTA, Colombia - Police put a man accused of heroin trafficking on a U.S.
government plane to Florida yesterday, the first time in nearly a decade
Colombia has turned over one of its nationals to stand trial in the United
States.

The hand-over 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.

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
today to the United States," judicial police director Gen. Ismael Trujillo
told reporters at a Bogota air base from which Lara left yesterday morning
on a DEA plane for Fort Lauderdale.

The handcuffed and heavily guarded suspect walked the 60 feet to the
twin-engine Cessna without uttering a word, police said.

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 in December. He
was among 42 drug suspects awaiting possible extradition to the United
States. At least 30 of those are Colombians captured Oct. 13 in a sweep
authorities dubbed Operation Millennium.

Colombian 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. The Nov. 11 bombing revived painful
memories of that era, although investigators have yet to blame 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.

White House drug policy chief Barry McCaffrey yesterday praised Pastrana
"for his courage and dedication" in "making a sincere effort to confront
drug trafficking."

In the past three years, the cultivation of coca - the raw material of
cocaine - has doubled in Colombia, McCaffrey said. The country has also
become a major heroin exporter.

U.S. officials argue that extradition is the only way to ensure that
Colombian drug traffickers receive stiff punishments for their crimes. Due
to weak laws, corruption and threats against judges and prosecutors, many
top drug convicts have received short sentences in Colombia.

The last time Colombia extradited one of its nationals for trials in the
United States was 1990.