LATIN AMERICA : Hints of Escobar’s Surrender Seem <i> Deja Vu</i> to Colombians

Pablo Escobar, Colombia’s notorious cocaine czar now on the lam, first turned himself in to authorities more than a year ago, but only after putting this nation through a spectacle that included pronouncements by a cryptic priest and a series of surrenders by lesser figures in Escobar’s trafficking organization.

To many interested observers here, the signs are pointing again to the start of a new, embarrassing Escobar parade, possibly culminating in the re-surrender of the leader of the Medellin drug cartel.

Just this week, for example, officials took back into custody an underling who surrendered after escaping with Escobar in July, when government troops prompted the drug kingpin to flee as they sought to transfer him out of his luxury prison near Medellin.

And once again, Father Rafael Garcia Herreros is making elliptical references to “Don Pablo” and his second coming. Asked this week if Escobar planned to surrender to authorities--again--the 83-year-old Catholic priest closed his eyes. After a long pause, he finally whispered, “The country is going to receive a surprise in a few days.”

Although Escobar has managed to elude his numerous enemies, including police and a rival cartel based in the city of Cali, Escobar’s lawyers again are trumpeting their client’s desire to surrender, even as he repeats his old threats against the government.

Garcia, who was widely mocked here for saying Escobar would surrender, and who then helped broker the deal that allowed him to do so, is helping to create a sense of national deja vu, convincing many Colombians that Escobar will soon be back in prison or at least some privileged version of it.

A number of journalists are already camped out in Medellin to try to catch the first glimpse of Escobar back behind bars. They have heard rumors that Escobar--to curry favor with President Cesar Gaviria--will turn himself in before Monday, when the president is scheduled to address the U.N. General Assembly in New York.

Meanwhile, Colombian officials are fighting the impression that they are repeating history by offering concessions to Escobar to win his surrender. Hours after Jose Avendano, one of Escobar’s fellow fugitives, surrendered again Tuesday, the country’s leading prosecutor denied any deal. “This is not a case of arrangements or agreements of any kind, but one of applying the law,” Gustavo de Greiff said.

Despite such public protestations that no deals are being cut, many here still agree with the opinion expressed recently by a law enforcement official who warned, “The government could easily fall into a second round of negotiations” with Escobar.

But testy Colombian officials disagree. They note that there are big differences between June, 1991, and this time. Chief among them: the ferocious criticism Gaviria has taken for allowing Escobar to control his prison for more than a year, then to escape it. Officials say Escobar and his men ran their drug-and-criminal enterprise from the jail, while enjoying amenities such as a Jacuzzi and a big-screen television.

“We no longer have any political margin for any kind of concessions, and Escobar knows that,” one official close to the president said.

To show they now mean business, officials pledge that when Escobar is caught, he probably will be thrown into the maximum-security prison under construction in the Medellin suburb of Itagui. It has closed-circuit television cameras in every cellblock and electronic locks on every door.

The prospect of a prison even partially controlled by police would probably be anathema to Escobar, who is accused of ordering a 1990 campaign that left more than 350 officers dead in Medellin and other cities.

Although Escobar is giving signs he wants to surrender, he probably has no intention of doing so and may be pursuing a complex strategy to blame the government for intransigence, a breakdown that he then would use to try to justify a wave of terrorism similar to what the cartel conducted in early 1991, some analysts say.

Indeed, a chilling reminder of the bad old days occurred Friday, when four unidentified gunmen killed Miriam Rocio Velez, 38, a judge who had been in charge of trying Escobar for the 1986 murder of a newspaper publisher, Guillermo Cano, according to radio reports.