DRUG LINK FEARED AS CAR BOMB KILLS 8 IN BOGOTA

Blast Seen As Warning Not To Extradite Drug Traffickers

BOGOTA - Raising the spectre of a bloody era when drug lords sowed terror
to avoid extradition to the United States, a car bomb ripped through a
commercial district in Colombia's capital yesterday, killing at least eight
people and injuring 45.

The shrapnel-packed bomb, placed in a red Mazda sedan and believed to have
been detonated by remote control, destroyed a two-storey house and a
restaurant on a wide avenue and blew out the windows of banks, stores and
apartment buildings nearly 400 metres away.

It was the city's worst blast since the wave of terror by the Medellin
cocaine cartel in the late 1980s and early '90s aimed at stopping the
extradition of its members to the U.S. The campaign ended with the cartel's
1993 demise.

The new attack came a day after the supreme court approved the second
handover in a week of a major alleged drug trafficker to the United States
- - and Colombians feared it was a blunt warning to the government not to go
ahead with more than three dozen planned extraditions.

President Andres Pastrana responded to the bombing defiantly, signing a
decree hours later that would extradite to the United States an accused
Colombian drug lord.

"You get the feeling the wolf is raising its ears again," said Miguel Maza,
a former head of the state security agency. Maza headed the agency in 1989,
when a bomb placed by traffickers levelled its headquarters, killing 80
employees in the single most devastating attack of the era.

Colombia is the world's No. 1 cocaine exporter and a growing heroin
supplier. U.S. officials have pressured authorities here to extradite drug
kingpins for trial in U.S. courtrooms, where they face much stiffer
sentences than in Colombia.

This violent country's leaders have traditionally been loath to do so and
there has not been an extradition for nine years. But Pastrana pledged to
resume handovers after his election last year, hoping for U.S. support in
confronting the illegal drug trade and leftist rebels.

Justice Minister Romulo Gonzalez said it was still too early to blame
"narcoterrorism" for the 10:15 a.m. blast - which sent shards of metal and
glass in all directions. Six people died on the scene, two others at
hospitals, and 14 people were hospitalized in serious condition, said city
health official Dr. Adriana Ortegon.

A badly burned and bleeding woman was pulled from beneath the skeleton of a
parked car thrown by the blast. Another woman was found face up on the
sidewalk in a pool of blood. A taxi driver who survived the explosion sat
shell-shocked in his badly damaged vehicle, his face bloodied, a few metres
from ground zero.

"It was a frightening explosion," said Martha di Iannini, who had just
walked into her luxury furniture store when the bomb went off 15 metres
away. It blew open the store's front window and flipped over furniture.

The bomb, made of an estimated 70 kilograms of explosives, left a
one-metre-deep crater in the sidewalk along the upscale Pepe Sierra Ave.

Maza, the former security chief, said the bombing was identical to many of
the indiscriminate attacks - in schools, at shopping centres and in public
squares - that terrorized Colombia before the 1993 death of Medellin cartel
boss Pablo Escobar.

Venezuelan Jose Fernando Flores and Colombian heroin suspect Jaime Orlando
Lara is scheduled to be the first of 42 jailed alleged drug bosses
extradited to stand trial in the U.S.

Also facing possible extradition is Fabio Ochoa, a former Medellin cartel
leader arrested Oct. 13. Ochoa faces a U.S. indictment for his alleged role
in a smuggling empire said to have exported up to 25 tonnes of cocaine a
month.