COLOMBIA SAYS TOP DRUG LORDS OFFER TO SURRENDER

BOGOTA, Colombia - Colombia's government is studying an offer to surrender
from the country's most powerful drug lords and is on course to crush the
world's biggest cocaine trade, the Interior Minister said on Monday.

The bosses of the Norte del Valle drug smuggling ring, which security
sources say is now Colombia's biggest following the destruction of the
infamous Cali and Medellin cartels in the 1990s, contacted the government
via the Roman Catholic Church, Interior Minister Fernando Londono told
local radio.

Local newspapers, quoting cartel sources, reported drug smugglers including
Hernando Gomez and Diego Leon Montoya, known by their underworld nicknames
"Scratch" and "Don Diego," want promises they will serve sentences in
Colombia and not be extradited to the United States.

If the top bosses of the Norte del Valle do surrender, it will be the
latest in a long line of victories against high profile drug cartels. But
so far these have only led to new criminal gangs taking their place and
Colombia produces as much cocaine as ever -- about 80 percent of the world
total.

Londono said it might be possible for the kingpins to serve time in
Colombia but they would be treated as criminals and could not negotiate a
peace deal of the sort offered to leftist rebels and far-right paramilitaries.

"The government is examining the legal options of a number of individuals
who want to hand themselves in to justice. These aren't peace talks, these
aren't rebels, they're criminal gangs who have to be dealt with according
to the law," he said.

Asked if the government would agree not to extradite the drug lords, he
replied: "That's an issue to study."

Colombia's cocaine kings traditionally fear extradition to tough U.S.
jails, preferring the prisons of their own country, where the prevailing
anarchy has often allowed them to live in style, wining and dining and
serviced by prostitutes.

Escobar's Private Prison

In the early 1990s, the notorious Medellin cartel boss Pablo Escobar waged
a bombing campaign against extradition.

Escobar was allowed to construct his own luxury prison, where he was
visited by friends and even oversaw the torture and murder of rivals,
according to security forces. He eventually walked out of the door to
freedom, living in hiding until he was tracked down and killed by police.

Londono said that prisons are no longer holiday camps.

"The prison thing is serious this time," he said.

The government of President Alvaro Uribe says it must smash the drug
industry in part because cocaine pays for the arms used by leftist rebels
and far-right paramilitaries fighting a four-decade war that claims
thousands of lives a year.

Boosting military spending, the government has attracted praise from
Washington for gearing up a crop-spraying program to kill coca plants, the
raw material for cocaine.

Londono said spraying would totally eliminate coca from the jungles of
Putumayo near the border with Ecuador by the end of the year. Until
recently, Putumayo produced half of Colombia's coca, providing a major
source of funds to paramilitaries and Marxist guerrillas from the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia -- a group known as "FARC."

The government has also hit the drug trade with tougher laws on
confiscating property obtained with illegal funds and more vigorous action
by the police and armed forces.

"By December 31, the balance of power is going to be radically different,"
Londono said.

Colombia's spraying program has been backed by almost $2 billion in mostly
military U.S. aid, but so far has struggled to make much of a dent in
output, as peasants have fled the crop dusters to plant in other parts of
the country. But U.S. officials say Uribe's more aggressive spraying should
slash the crop to a third or less of present levels by 2004 or 2005.