COLOMBIAN WARLORD SAYS HE'LL SURRENDER

BOGOTA -- Carlos Castano, the paramilitary chief indicted by the United
States for drug trafficking, expressed confidence Wednesday he would be
found innocent and said again that he would turn himself in.

Castano told RCN, a nationwide TV and radio broadcast network, that his
lawyer Joaquin Perez traveled Tuesday to Washington to arrange for his
surrender. The militia leader maintains a base in the mountains of
northwest Colombia, and has gunmen in many areas of this South American nation.

Castano recently mounted a campaign to distance his anti-rebel group from
profiting from cocaine production. But U.S. authorities said he was deeply
involved in cocaine production in Colombia, the world's main supplier of
the drug.

Since 1997, Castano and two other indicted paramilitary figures fixed
prices up the production chain and arranged to haul tons of cocaine by ship
from Colombia to the United States and Europe, according to the indictment
unsealed Tuesday by the U.S. District Court in Washington. Attorney General
John Ashcroft said Tuesday the United States would seek Castano's extradition.

Earlier this month, Castano insisted he was disassociating the AUC, an
umbrella group of right-wing militias, from drug trafficking, although the
group said it would continue to tax growers of coca, the raw material of
cocaine. Leftist rebels also earn huge profits from drug trafficking.

Factions of the AUC, believed to number some 10,000 combatants, splintered
over the group's new position, with some complaining that the AUC had not
completely rejected cocaine production, and others deciding to remain in
the drug business.

On Sept 13, the Colombian navy seized a speedboat with 4 tons of cocaine
along the Pacific coast in southwest Colombia. Authorities said the cocaine
belonged to the paramilitaries.

In an email to mass media on Sept 16, Castano lashed out at the
paramilitaries involved.

"It is regrettable that this front which belongs to the AUC is seen
involved in drug trafficking matters, when days earlier we committed
ourselves to not being involved in the dirty business of drug trafficking,"
he wrote.

He said drug trafficking constituted "a grave situation that threatens the
unity and future of the AUC."

For U.S. authorities, his condemnation of drug trafficking came too late.

"It is clear that the paramilitary organization led by Carlos Castano was
immersed for years in the illegal drug trade, from the taxing of the coca
growers to the processing laboratories to the transportation of cocaine to
the targeted country," DEA director Asa Hutchinson said in Washington.
(Compiled from wire reports)