Colombia Names New Justice Minister to Battle the Drug Cartels

President Virgilio Barco Vargas has named a new justice minister to replace Monica de Greiff, who resigned last month in the face of escalating violence that continued Friday when a bomb exploded in a clothing store in the drug cartel stronghold of Medellin, killing one person.

Roberto Salazar Manrique, who was appointed to the job Thursday night, will now lead the government’s crackdown on the nation’s drug lords, processing extraditions of Colombian traffickers to the United States.

He met with reporters on Friday and said that he would take a cautious approach to the job vacated by De Greiff, who quit after repeated death threats from the traffickers and after one of her predecessors was slain.

“To be responsible in life means to be cautious,” Salazar said after meeting with Barco at the presidential palace in Bogota.

Both an economist and a lawyer, Salazar said that he is well aware of the risks involved and still favors extradition of drug-trafficking suspects to the United States.

“If I weren’t for it, I wouldn’t have accepted” the appointment, the anti-drug newspaper El Espectador quoted Salazar as saying Thursday night. “The sole acceptance of the job says it all.”

The Barco government declared war on the traffickers following the Aug. 18 assassination of leading presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan, an anti-drug crusader.

As part of emergency measures enacted during the crackdown, the government revived Colombia’s extradition treaty with the United States. So far just one suspect has been extradited, but proceedings are under way against another.

Salazar, a little-known public figure, was deputy finance minister in the 1970s and later worked at the Central Bank where he was deputy general manager and secretary general of the Monetary Board. He becomes Barco’s ninth justice minister.

Two other Cabinet changes were announced.

Communications Minister and acting Justice Minister Carlos Lemos Simmonds was named government minister following Wednesday’s resignation of Orlando Vasquez Velazquez, who sought to return to Parliament. Replacing him at the Communications Ministry will be Enrique Danies Rincones, the former governor of the remote Caribbean province of Guajira.

Drug-related violence showed no sign of abating amid the Cabinet shuffles.

In addition to the bombing in Medellin, two bombs exploded at a supermarket and a bank in Bogota Thursday night. Police said two suspects were detained.

Also, police on Friday found 500 pounds of dynamite at a house they raided in southern Bogota following the arrest of two suspects.