CITING PROGRESS, U.S. ENDS DRUG SANCTIONS ON BOGOTA

Pakistan and Cambodia Also Receive Waivers

WASHINGTON---Citing national security concerns and gains in Colombia's war
on drugs, the Clinton administration has decided to waive sanctions against
that country.

Although Colombia will remain in a special "decertified" category, the
waiver means that there will be fewer impediments to U.S. assistance to
Colombia's anti-drug efforts. Colombia also will be spared economic
penalties for the coming year.

Pakistan and Cambodia also received a sanctions waiver despite their poor
record, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright announced.

American officials described the agreement hours before the public release
of formal administration evaluations of the anti-narcotics performances of
30 foreign countries.

Most of the 30 were expected to be "certified" as fully cooperating with
U.S. anti-narcotics efforts. The officials, asking not to be identified,
said the administration had decided, as expected, to recertify Mexico,
ignoring the objections of many in Congress.

The administration is not certifying Colombia as fully cooperating because
of ficials believe that country's anti-narcotics effort suffers from
serious shortcomings, the officials said.

In Colombia, Foreign Minister Maria Emma MeFia called the conditional
certification a triumph "for this country, which has suffered greatly,
which has lost a lot of tives and for the president, of course, who has
helped us emerge from this predicament we've had for two years that did not
serve us well."

Colombia remains the world's leading producer and distributor of cocaine
and a major supplier of heroin and marijuana.

The officials said Colombia-would remain in the "decertified" category.
They added that the decision to waive the sanctions was based partly on the
emergence of the Colombian national police as an effective
counter-narcotics force.

For the last two years, Colombia has been ineligible for all U.S.
assistance except for humanitarian and counternarcotics aid. The
designation also required the United States to vote against Colombian loan
requests in international lending institutions. Colombia's president,
Ernesto Samper, is a major reason the Clinton administration has been
unable to give Colombia a clean bill of health. He is seen in Washington as
beholden to drug traffickers based on an alleged $6 million contribution he
received during the 1994 presidential campaign.

The U.S. decision to waive sanctions was made easier by the fact that Mr.
Samper's term in of fice ends in August. Presidential elections are set for
May.

American officials said Colombia's eradication campaign had been
impressive, but they said increased plantings by traffickers had more than
compensated for the crops destroyed through spraying. They also describe as
a step forward the reinstatement of an extradition law by the Colombian
legislature in December.

Colombia had joined Afghanistan Burma, Nigeria and Iran on the list of
decertified countries ineligible for most U.S. assistance.

Other countries subject to the certification process were Aruba, the
Bahamas, Bolivia, Brazil, Cambodia China, the Dominican Republic Ecuador,
Guatemala, Haiti, Hong Kong, India, Jamaica, Laos, Malaysia, Panama,
Paraguay, Peru, Taiwan, Thailand, Venezuela and Vietnarn.

Syria and Lebanon were decertified last year but are no longer considered
problem countries because of successful opium poppy eradication programs.

The certification process, first required by Congress in 1986, enrages many
countries, where it is seen as counterproductive. These nations say the
root cause of the drug problem is insatiable U.S. demand, not lax
enforcement by source countries.

But Clinton administration officials say the threat of public humiliation
the certification process entails has energized anti-narcotics activities
in a number of countries.

(AP, AFP, Reuters)

- -- 'Emerald King' Is Arrested

A millionaire entrepreneur known as the "Emerald King" was arrested late
Tuesday on a farm in a suburb of Bogota on charges of sponsoring and
financing right-wing paramilitary death squads, The Washington Post
reported.

Prosecutors said Victor Manuel Carranza Nino, 56, had long been suspected
of complicity in a number of killings and of being involved in drug
trafficking.