EXTRADITION OF REBEL IS A POSITIVE SIGN

THE ISSUE - A Colombian guerrilla has been extradited to the U.S. to face
charges of participating in the killing of a Hawaii woman and two others.

COLOMBIA'S extradition to the United States of a rebel accused in the
killing of Hawaii's Lahehenae Gay and two companions is the most recent sign
of a heightened effort to bring that country's 40-year guerrilla war to an
end. A hard-line policy by President Alvaro Uribe and increased aid by the
Bush administration have resulted in a bold assault on an insurgency that is
America's largest supplier of heroin and cocaine.

Gay, an environmentalist and cultural preservationist on the Big Island, was
shot to death in 1999 along with American Indian activists Ingrid
Washinawatok and Terence Freitas in Venezuela, near the Colombian border.
Gay, 39, was founder of the Pacific Cultural Conservancy International in
1989 in Pahoa. The three had been helping an indigenous Colombian group, the
U'wa people, set up a school and protest oil drilling by Los Angeles-based
Occidental Petroleum Corp. in jungles near the Venezuelan border.

Ironically, President Bush has been accused of being motivated by oil in
launching "Plan Colombia" in 2000 with the declared purpose of combating
terrorism and narcotics traffic. The Bush administration has given $1.9
billion in aid to Colombia, including money to be spent on training the
Colombian army and police to fight guerrillas.

The latest installment included $98 million to buttress the training of
Colombian soldiers by 70 U.S. Special Forces to protect a 500-mile stretch
of pipeline jointly owned by Occidental and the Colombian government.
Leftist guerillas reportedly bombed the pipeline 170 times in 2001.

Nelson Vargas Rueda, 33, who faces trial in the United States for
participating in the killing of Gay, Washinawatok and Freitas, is a member
of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia, or FARC, the larger of two
leftist rebel groups. Five other members of the FARC have been indicted in
the case but have yet to be extradited. The FARC has admitted its members
are responsible for the killings, blaming a rogue lower-level commander whom
it says it will punish.

Rueda is the first Colombian guerrilla to be extradited to the United
States. He is among 43 Colombians extradited to the United States, mostly
for drug-trafficking charges, during the 10 months that Uribe has been
president. That compares to 51 extraditions during the entire four-year term
of Uribe's predecessor, Andres Pastrana.