Scandal Over Tapes Widens in Colombia : Latin America: Loser in presidential vote demands winner step down if drug-money charges prove true.

Amid a widening scandal, the loser in Colombia’s presidential election Wednesday demanded that President-elect Ernesto Samper step down if allegations that drug money financed his run for office are proven true.

“What the country wants is the absolute tranquillity that its president is a clean president,” Andres Pastrana told a packed news conference following the discovery of taped telephone conversations in which two of the world’s biggest cocaine traffickers discuss deals and money to be offered to the Samper campaign.

Samper, of the ruling Liberal Party, has denied that his campaign received dirty money. But the explosion of this scandal just days after his election Sunday threatens the credibility of a government that must prove it is not beholden to leaders of the mighty Cali cartel.

The allegations revived fears in the international community, and especially in Washington, that drug influence has permeated Colombian society and is steadily undermining this country’s besieged democracy.

American officials have been critical of the Colombian government’s failure to fight the Cali cartel with the same force as it fought the notorious Medellin cartel, whose leader Pablo Escobar was slain by police last December. Samper has indicated that he will not alter the government’s policy of plea-bargaining with Cali drug bosses.

Colombia supplies much of the world’s cocaine. The multibillion-dollar business is dominated by the Cali cartel, which, in contrast to the brazenly violent Medellin cartel, extends its power more subtly through corruption, bribery and infiltration of government circles.

U.S. officials and some Colombians have long expressed concerns that the traffickers would use their huge fortunes to influence the presidential election, then be well-positioned to pull strings in the new government.

Reporters this week obtained tape recordings of three telephone conversations between two heads of the Cali cartel, brothers Gilberto and Miguel Angel Rodriguez Orejuela, and Colombian journalist Alberto Giraldo, who has been linked frequently to the cartel.

Giraldo on Wednesday confirmed that he served as the cartel’s go-between with the campaigns, although he claimed they did not take him up on the offers of cash.

What is remarkable and chilling about the tape is to hear men whom American law enforcement officials have branded as two of the world’s largest cocaine traffickers discuss--calmly, in cavalier fashion and in the language of street thugs--how to influence the election of a president and future government.

“So, how’s it going with Samper, man?” one of the brothers, thought to be Miguel Angel, says.

“It’s in your hands,” Giraldo responds. “Look, the truth is they need 5 billion (pesos), of which they have two. They need three, from you all.”

“It’s available,” Rodriguez Orejuela says. “It’s set.”

Three billion pesos is equivalent to $3.75 million.

Later, Giraldo is more explicit: “The presidency depends on you all,” he tells Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela.

The cartel bosses, according to the tape, apparently expected to cut a deal with Samper’s defense minister and may have been seeking other government posts for cronies.

The tape also implicates Gen. Miguel Maza Marquez, former head of the secret police and ostensibly one of Colombia’s chief players in the war against narcotics. Giraldo seems to suggest Maza also took drug money. Maza ran unsuccessfully for president in the first round, then backed Samper. He said the charges were slanderous.

The authenticity of the voices on the tape was confirmed Wednesday by the Defense Ministry and the National Police. How the tape was recorded remains unclear.

Samper said he would cooperate with an investigation already under way by the state prosecutor general, Gustavo de Greiff. He said he would make his campaign contribution books available and fire anyone in his campaign who is proven to have accepted dirty money.

De Greiff has been a principal target of American criticism for what Washington officials consider his leniency toward traffickers.

Samper’s assurances were not expected to satisfy Pastrana or law enforcement agencies. “It is not enough to open the campaign’s accounting books,” Pastrana said. “Colombian public opinion, as well as the community of nations, awaits the assurance, which I am sure Dr. Samper will make, that, if it is proven that the president-elect’s campaign received money from drug trafficking, he will resign from his public mandate, because he would have a flawed credential.”

Pastrana said an unidentified man outside a hotel in Cali gave the candidate a copy of the tape last week. Pastrana handed it over to President Cesar Gaviria and Defense Minister Rafael Pardo, who promised an investigation.

Pastrana confirmed that his treasurer, Hernan Beltz, received an offer of money from the Cali group but said it was rejected. On the tape, Rodriguez Orejuela seems to suggest Pastrana’s campaign accepted other drug money, but Pastrana denied it.

Robert Gelbard, U.S. assistant secretary of state for narcotics matters, told the Associated Press the reports were “the worst kind of information we could receive.”