COLOMBIA SUSPENDS RIGHT-WING WARLORD'S EXTRADITION

BOGOTA, Colombia - One of the bloodiest leaders of Colombia's
right-wing paramilitaries conditionally won his battle to avoid
extradition to the United States on Thursday when the government said
he could stay in the country.

Diego Fernando Murillo, known as Don Berna, who oversaw a vast
criminal network from his Medellin base in the 1990s, will not be
sent north to face drug smuggling charges as long as he cooperates
with Colombia's demobilization of illegal armed groups.

The U.S. Embassy in Bogota said in a statement it was disappointed at
the decision to suspend the extradition. It pointed out that Colombia
had said extradition would not be negotiated in the demobilization.

Under the demobilization, Murillo is required to cooperate with
investigators in an effort to provide reparations to those victimized
by the paramilitaries over the past 20 years during which they
terrorized the Andean country in the name of fighting left-wing
rebels. More than 10,000 militia members have turned in their guns.

While the United States backs President Alvaro Uribe, elected in 2002
on promises of smashing Colombia's Marxist insurgency, his peace plan
threatens to put cases against major drug offenders like Murillo on
the back burner.

"What happened today is further evidence that top drug lords are
calling the shots in this so-called peace process with the
government," said Jose Miguel Vivanco, Americas director for New
York-based Human Rights Watch.

"This is what the paramilitaries have wanted from the beginning, to
avoid extradition. And that's what the criminal who succeeded Pablo
Escobar in controlling Medellin got today," he added, referring to
Colombia's most notorious cocaine king who was gunned down by
authorities in 1993.

Critics of the demobilization say it offers soft treatment to those
guilty of some of the worst atrocities of Colombia's decades-old
guerrilla war. Those who massacred and beheaded peasants suspected of
cooperating with the rebels face up to only eight years in prison.

Thousands are killed and tens of thousand are forced from their homes
every year by Colombia's conflict, what the United Nations calls the
world's worst ongoing humanitarian crisis outside Africa.