Colombia and Drug Cartel Seeking Truce

The Colombian government and the Medellin cocaine cartel dangled new carrots in front of each other Friday in what officials called the most promising effort to date to end the country’s bloody anti-drug war.

The Medellin cartel, led by Pablo Escobar, announced a truce Friday in its kidnaping campaign and promised to free several hostages if the government guarantees drug traffickers’ safety.

Government officials, in turn, said they were preparing the way for the surrender of hundreds of drug suspects.

The official statements came after the unprecedented proposal by the cartel late Thursday to gather as many as 300 of its members in a high-security compound guarded by either the army or international human rights groups.

Evaluating both the cartel’s proposal and the government’s relatively warm response, analysts said both sides want to avoid any resurgence of bombings and other indiscriminate terrorist attacks--the government because it wants to protect its popularity and the cartel because the government’s strong anti-trafficker campaign has weakened it.

A group of Colombian leaders who have been negotiating privately with the cartel delivered its offer to the government. The statement does not mention whether Escobar is among the traffickers proposing to confine themselves in a camp.

The cartel’s proposal and the government’s response were hailed by many Colombian leaders Friday as evidence that the two sides are seeking an understanding to end the country’s drug violence. Such an agreement would mark a drastic change in the government’s policy of cracking down militarily on cocaine traffickers.

However, other Colombian and foreign officials say they doubt that a final chapter is opening in the country’s anti-drug war. They point out that traffickers are trying to place conditions on a government that has pledged never to negotiate with them. They also note that another cartel based in the city of Cali is not a party to the Medellin traffickers’ plans.

In exchange for the offer, the Medellin leaders say the government must guarantee their safety, prohibit their extradition to the United States and drop a demand that they confess their crimes.

The government responded to the cartel’s statement by further softening its anti-drug stance. President Cesar Gaviria had already offered a deal to traffickers who surrender: a trial in Colombia rather than extradition, which the drug lords fear. He also promised reduced prison sentences for traffickers who confess their crimes and become informants.

Justice Minister Jaime Giraldo said after the cartel’s offer that its members would have to confess only one of their crimes, not all of them, as Gaviria demanded when he announced his plan in September.

“We believe we are on the threshold of a transcendental act to bring peace to Colombia,” Giraldo said in a television interview. He assured traffickers that they will not be extradited if they present themselves to authorities.

The country’s director of criminal courts, Carlos Mejia, said Friday that the government would guarantee the safety and protect the legal rights of surrendering drug suspects.

Escobar and other cartel leaders are blamed for the killings of scores of judges, journalists and political leaders. The terrorist campaign intensified last year, when traffickers gunned down a leading presidential candidate, Sen. Luis Carlos Galan, at a campaign rally.

The assassination prompted the government to decree both the extradition of drug suspects and the confiscation of their property. Traffickers responded with bombings and other attacks that killed about 550 people.

Earlier this year, the cartel suspended its indiscriminate terrorism and began kidnaping journalists and other prominent Colombians in a more subtle attempt to pressure the government. Authorities blame the cartel for at least 10 recent abductions.

The cartel’s members say they are holding the hostages to protect themselves from police, whom they accuse of killing and torturing drug suspects.

Earlier this week, Justice Minister Giraldo announced a plan to try suspected traffickers using a system of multiple, anonymous judges.

At the criminal courts division, Mejia said Friday that the government is “making arrangements for high-security prisons and cell blocks” for traffickers convicted under the new system, to be put in place in January.

But many foreign officials say the plan will not work.

“The Colombian government is still years away from being able to try and convict traffickers here,” said a U.S. official familiar with narcotics matters in a recent interview in Bogota.

He and others doubt that traffickers will ever submit themselves even to Colombia’s justice system, which has been damaged by the cartel’s violence against judges.

In earlier statements, the cartel’s members have demanded that the government treat them not like common criminals but like fighters in one of the country’s leftist guerrilla groups. An official peace plan offers guerrillas who give up their weapons a full amnesty for political crimes.

Rebel groups accepting the plan have gathered in so-called peace camps while they negotiate with officials. One of the groups, the M-19, laid down its arms, received a full pardon and transformed itself into a political party last April after gathering its forces in the town of Santo Domingo.

It was not clear from the cartel’s proposal at what point its members would be disarmed.

Former President Alfonso Lopez Michelsen, one of the leaders who has been negotiating with the cartel, said Friday that traffickers want to follow in the path of the M-19.

“What would be carried out with the drug traffickers would be a process similar to that given to the M-19 gathered at Santo Domingo,” Lopez said in a radio interview.

Gaviria, who served as campaign manager for the slain candidate Galan, has repeatedly denied amnesty for traffickers, whom he calls common criminals.

But after taking office, the 43-year-old economist began offering the Medellin cartel incentives, including an end to extradition, to give up its fight.