IN COLOMBIA

EXTRADITION LAW A STEP BACK IN ANTIDRUG COOPERATION

The news in Colombia is not all bad.

Colombians last month scored a significant victory against a rebel campaign
to thwart democracy and sabotage municipal elections across the country. In
the months preceding the elections more than 40 candidates had been
murdered, more than 200 others were kidnapped and nearly 2,000 received
death threats. With only a few exceptions, where security concerns only
postponed the vote, the elections were a success.

Colombia is also making headway with its antidrug campaign, with
significant progress in efforts by the financial sector to combat
moneylaundering, in spraying of drug crops and in drug arrests and seizures.

However, the recent approval of watereddown extradition legislation raises
new and troubling questions about the power of drug cartels within
Colombia's government.

Colombia's House of Representatives this week lifted a 6 yearold
constitutional ban on extradition. However, as John Otis reported for the
Chronicle on Nov. 27, legislators rejected amid accusations of drug
cartel payoffs and threats retroactive legislation that would have
applied to past crimes and to drug lords now serving light sentences in
Colombia's loosely regulated jails.

Extradition of drug criminals to the United States, where they face harsher
sentences, is one of the most controversial issues in Colombia. The debate
quickly takes on antiUnited States overtones, and critics who repeatedly
cite the U.S. demand for drugs as central to the problem have a valid point.

Nor should it be overlooked that the Colombian government has made some
important strides in recent months toward reform and regaining of control
from the interests of narco traffickers.

U.S. drug czar Barry McCaffrey left from a visit to Colombia late last
month saying he was convinced "that both our countries can do more to
cooperate against the production, sale and consumption of illegal drugs."

His valid point is that cooperation must be the key. And in that ongoing
effort to cooperate there are inevitable steps forward and steps back. The
extradition bill, on the whole and in the absence of tougher sentencing
reform in Colombia, has to be looked at as evidence that cartel interests
still wield much influence in the halls of power there.

And thus, measured either as a fruitful sign of cooperation or as an
effective deterrent to narcotrafficking, it must be seen as a step back.