Colombia’s Drug Lords Concede They Lost War : Cocaine cartels: Declaration promises an end to killings and trafficking. Vows raise hope and questions.

Warring drug lords conceded victory to the Colombian government Wednesday, announcing a suspension of their bloody campaign of bombings and killings.

In a declaration delivered with the release of a mother and daughter kidnaped last month, the traffickers also promised to free other hostages, suspend cocaine shipments and turn over their arms if they receive “constitutional and legal guarantees.”

The surprise declaration, which immediately raised both hopes for peace and skeptical questions, was signed “the Extraditables.” That name is used by an anonymous group of traffickers believed to include kingpins of the so-called Medellin cartel, one of the richest and most brutal crime syndicates in the world.

The drug lords have sued for peace in the past, offering to give up their multibillion-dollar cocaine trade in exchange for amnesty. But Wednesday’s 11-point declaration made no specific demands for amnesty and appeared to signal a unilateral and unconditional suspension of hostilities.

Point No. 10 of the document declared “that there will be no attacks with explosives in any part of the national territory and that we have ordered the suspension of any kind of executions of political leaders, organizational and governmental officials, judicial officials, journalists, policemen and military men.”

Point No. 11, however, said that the “essential cause” of the drug traffickers’ fight “has been and will always be our families, our freedoms . . . and our rights of nationality.” That point raised doubts about the ultimate surrender of the traffickers as long as the government insists on prosecuting them for crimes or permitting their extradition to the United States for trial.

The declaration said the traffickers recognize the right of the government to assure its own survival “in the face of organizations and persons who, as is our case, live outside the law, combatting institutions and the very existence of the established juridical order.”

It added: “Consequently, we accept the triumph of the state, of the institutions and the legitimately established government, though we will lay aside the arms and the goals of our struggle. . . .

“We accept the existing legal order with the hope of obtaining from the government and society respect for our rights and a re-integration of our families and communities.”

The declaration said the traffickers “have decided to suspend the shipment of drugs and to turn over the arms, explosives, laboratories, hostages, clandestine landing strips and other elements that form part of our activities as soon as we are given constitutional and legal guarantees.”

Minister of Government Carlos Lemos said accused traffickers will receive the same guarantees as all Colombians for a free and fair trial, but the government will not make “any kind of commitment” beyond that.

Asked on television if the government would consider exempting traffickers from extradition, Lemos said: “The government has won this war on the basis of not making concessions. I don’t see why it has to change policy, when its enemies themselves have declared that this policy has triumphed.”

Hernando Correa, Lemos’ press spokesman, called the traffickers’ declaration a surrender.

“It should be received with much satisfaction, but with much precaution, because in the past they have said many things that were not fulfilled,” Correa said in an interview with The Times.

Security forces under President Virgilio Barco Vargas have sharply increased pressure on the cocaine trade during the past year, raiding numerous drug laboratories and other trafficking centers. In apparent retaliation last August, gunmen killed a judge, a police colonel and a popular politician who was running for president.

Barco then signed emergency decrees that allow the confiscation of accused traffickers’ properties and that override a legal impediment that had prevented extradition since 1987.

In announcing the decrees, the president declared war on the traffickers. In return, the Extraditables declared war on the government.

In Washington, White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater called on the Barco government to continue to resist the cartel’s overtures.

“We have always said, ‘No deals,’ ” he said. “. . . President Barco has been clear on no deals, and so have we.”

The Colombian government in recent months has seized scores of ranches, offices and homes, arresting hundreds of suspects. For their part, the Extraditables have terrorized the country with a campaign of bomb attacks. About 260 bombs have exploded since late August, killing more than 200 people.

Plastic explosives planted aboard an airliner killed 107, and a bus bomb at the headquarters of Colombia’s equivalent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation killed 63.

On Dec. 15, authorities hunted down kingpin Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, reputedly the No. 2 trafficker in the Medellin network, and killed him in a shoot-out.

Since Rodriguez Gacha’s death, “narco-terrorists” have raised tensions further with a series of more than 20 kidnapings. Many of the victims have been prominent, including the son of President Barco’s closest adviser, German Montoya.

The son, Diego Montoya, was still being held Wednesday when kidnapers released Patricia Echevarria and her teen-age daughter, Lina.

Echevarria is the wife of a prominent Medellin doctor and the sister of Barco’s son-in-law. She and her daughter had been held in a rural house by hooded men since Dec. 16.

The kidnapers released the pair Wednesday morning at a Medellin housing project that was financed by trafficker Pablo Escobar, the alleged leader of the Medellin network. News reporters, acting on a tip, found the victims inside a parked van.

Echevarria delivered the declaration from the Extraditables, who said in the document that they were releasing the two hostages as proof of good faith. The hostages said other hostages would be released as circumstances permit.

The Extraditables also offered to act as peace mediators for the government with groups of hired killers and paramilitary death squads. Officials say traffickers have helped finance and train many of the hired killers and death squads.

The declaration was written at least partly in response to a public letter signed by former Presidents Alfonso Lopez Michelsen and Julio Cesar Turbay Ayala and Archbishop Mario Revollo Bravo, the Roman Catholic primate here.

The letter, published Tuesday, urged the Extraditables to release kidnap victims and suspend drug shipments. It said by doing so, the traffickers would merit “less rigorous treatment than if they persist in their criminal activities.”

In their declaration Wednesday, the Extraditables called the proposal “a patriotic invitation.” A controversy has broken out in the Colombian media over whether the letter’s authors consulted with traffickers and government officials before making the proposal.

Lemos, the minister of government, declined to say Wednesday whether the government would offer “less rigorous treatment” to the traffickers. “Let’s see first whether they turn themselves in or not,” he said.

Gen. Nelson Mejia, commander of the Colombian armed forces, said the traffickers’ promises were “all magnificent, but the state makes no concessions.” Sen. Ernesto Samper, a presidential hopeful in Barco’s Liberal Party, said the traffickers do not seem to be demanding concessions in their declaration.

“I think it is an unconditional surrender that doesn’t even leave room to talk about negotiations,” Samper said. He added that the main question now is “whether, really, the offers they make are going to be carried out.”

Meanwhile, Colombian authorities Wednesday turned over an accused brother-and-sister team of cocaine traffickers to U.S. marshals in Bogota. The Colombian pair, Diana Maria Caballero Rangel Gamber, 29, and Roberto Caballero Rangel, 32, bring to 13 the number of Colombians extradited to the United States for drug charges since Barco’s crackdown.

The defendants fled to Colombia after being indicted in September, 1988, in Greensboro, N.C., with 11 others on charges of conspiring over a six-year period to possess and distribute cocaine.