Colombia’s New Leader Says He’ll Pacify Nation : South America: Gaviria takes office with a tough position against the Medellin drug cartel.

Cesar Gaviria, 43, took office Tuesday as president of Colombia and vowed in an ambitious inaugural speech to pacify his violence-torn South American country.

Gaviria took a tough position against “narco-terrorism,” ruthless bombings and shootings by the notorious Medellin cartel of cocaine traffickers.

“Narco-terrorism is the principal threat against our democracy,” he said. “We will face it without concessions.”

Foreign officials attending the inauguration ceremony, which took place in a plaza between the Congress building and the presidential palace, included three South American presidents and Vice President Dan Quayle. Police and soldiers cordoned off a large area around the plaza, and armed helicopters hovered overhead.

The extreme security measures reflected fear of an attack by drug traffickers, and so did Gaviria in his speech, recalling the assassinations of three presidential candidates in the campaign that ended with his election May 27. Police have blamed the Medellin drug cartel for all three slayings.

“No nation in the history of humanity,” Gaviria said, “has paid as high a price as Colombia . . . for confronting the most powerful criminal organizations in memory.”

He did not refer to a truce that has silenced narco-terrorist bombs and guns since July 28, but he had said earlier that it was good news. The traffickers have called for an end to the government policy of extraditing Colombians for trial in the United States.

Gaviria said Tuesday that extradition is a “discretionary” tool, but for the government to exercise true discretion, “it is first required that the terror disappear and that we have a strengthened judicial system.”

He appeared to leave the door open for a tacit peace arrangement that would offer traffickers the alternative of trial in Colombia rather than extradition--if the narco-terrorism ends and if Colombia’s courts, made impotent by intimidation and bribes, can be rehabilitated.

Gaviria promised deep reforms in the criminal justice system and special protection for judges.

Without effective justice for traffickers in Colombia, the outgoing administration of President Virgilio Barco Vargas has in the past year extradited 22 accused traffickers.

Quayle, after meeting with Gaviria, was asked by a Colombian journalist if the United States would halt its economic aid to Colombia if the new administration stopped extraditing suspected drug dealers to the United States.

Quayle did not respond directly but said: “We anticipate the extradition will go forward, and we think it will. I have no reason to believe that it will not.”

Gaviria’s pacification proposals also include dismantling death squads, which have killed thousands of suspected guerrilla sympathizers and other leftists, and following through on the Barco administration’s peace negotiations with guerrilla organizations.

Guerrillas of the April 19 Movement, or M-19, laid down their arms last March and joined in the presidential campaign. Three other guerrilla groups also have entered peace talks, but two others continue to fight the government.

On April 26 a gunman killed Carlos Pizarro, the M-19 presidential candidate. Antonio Navarro continued the race as the M-19 candidate and finished third with 12% of the vote.