Colombia's Samper raises stakes in drug war

By Tom Brown BOGOTA, April 9 (Reuter) President Ernesto Samper has
raised the stakes in Colombia's drug war by calling for an end to the
country's constitutional ban on the extradition of cocaine kings and other
criminals.

The move, which could clear the way for jailed Cali cartel traffickers to
be put on trial in the United States, must still be approved by Congress,
however.

And political analysts say it promises to be the subject of months of
heated debate carried out under the constant threat that cartel bosses, who
have brought pressure to bear on legislators in the past, will relaunch the
campaign of terror that was waged against extradition in the 1980s and early
1990s.

"This is going to be a long, uphill battle," one Western diplomat said of
the upcoming congressional debate, noting that many lawmakers have been
accused of shadowy links to the drug trade.

The ban clamped on extradition by Colombia's constituyent assembly in
1991 was passed after hundreds of people, including three presidential
candidates, a justice minister, high court judges, journalists and scores of
police were killed in a campaign of assassinations, kidnappings and bombings
carried out by the now defunct Medellin drug cartel.

Samper referred to the threat of a new wave of terror in announcing his
decision to call for a lifting of the ban in an open letter to top
government, military and police officials made public late on Tuesday.
"Painful images of the years when the word extradition was synonymous with
death, suffering and the anguish of thousands of innocent people are still
fresh in the minds of many Colombians," he said, The embattled Colombian
leader, whose 1994 election campaign is alleged to have received millions of
dollars in Cali cartel drug money, has failed to support efforts to revive
extradition in the past.

But he suffered the public humiliation of having his U.S.

travel visa revoked in July of last year, a month after he failed to respond
to Washington's request for the extradition of jailed Cali cartel kingpins.
And U.S. officials cited his government's failure to enforce a U.S.Colombian
extradition treaty, signed in 1979, as among thw reasons for the decision
last February to leave Colombia on a U.S. drugs blacklist for a second
consecutive year.

U.S. lobbying and behindthescenes pressure tactics are widely seen as
the reason for Samper's aboutface on extradition, a practice that public
opinion polls indicate that an overwhelming majority of Colombians oppose.

Bogota Mayor Antanas Mockus, who stepped down last weekend to launch an
independent bid for the presidency, summed up the issue perhaps better than
anyone else when asked why he would approve of extradition if he won the
country's top job.

"The gringos have got us by the balls," he said.

If lawmakers approve of lifting the ban on extradition, and making it
applicable under domestic law, the move is unlikely to come before December
since constitutional reforms can only be enacted by two consecutive periods
of Congress.

At that point, and only after it, government sources say Samper would
propose implementing legislation spelling out exactly how the practice will
work and in what specific cases.

According to Justice Minister Carlos Medellin, a leading proponent of
extradition, the mere elimination of Article 35 of the constitution, the one
prohibiting extradition of Colombian nationals, would give bilateral treaties
like the one with Washington the full weight of international law.

The only major Colombian trafficker extradited to the United States to
date is Carlos Ledher Rivas, a founding member and mastermind behind the
Medellin cartel. He was bundled off by U.S. drug agents in February 1987 and
is serving a life sentence in the maximum security prison in Marion, Illinois
in the company of other celebrated criminals like New York's "Dapper Don"
John Gotti.