The U.S. Justice Department is demanding the extradition of the three, including AUC chief Carlos Castaño, on drug-trafficking charges. It has previously secured indictments on similar charges against several leaders of the main antigovernment guerrilla organization, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Washington has justified its demand to extradite individuals from Colombia, together with its increasing military intervention in that South American nation, under the banner of fighting "narcoterrorism." The U.S. State Department has placed the two main antigovernment guerrilla organizations--the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN)--along with the AUC on a list of 31 organizations it labels "terrorist."

Colombian minister of the interior Fernando Londoño assured U.S. officials that the extradition request would be given priority and that other indictments would follow. "The request for the extradition of [top] leaders of FARC was only a matter of paperwork," Londoño said.

Washington has previously used extradition requests and indictments of citizens of other countries as a justification for military intervention abroad. In 1989 U.S. troops invaded Panama and overthrew its government, seizing Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega and putting him on trial in a U.S. court on charges of allowing Colombian drug cartels to ship tons of cocaine through Panama.

The latest indictments followed the approval by the U.S. Congress of $42 million in military funds to the Colombian regime. The financing was approved after the U.S. State Department "certified" the Colombian government for "addressing" charges that the armed forces are complicit in brutal repression carried out by paramilitary forces.

As Washington has escalated its intervention in Colombia over the past three years, verbal criticism of human rights violations by U.S. big-business politicians "has far less impact than it did as recently as last summer, when both Republicans and Democrats raised the specter of U.S. involvement in ‘another Vietnam,’" a Washington Post article said.

The U.S. government has used its Plan Colombia, a program of $1.3 billion in military funding, to increase its armed presence in Colombia and more broadly in the region. It backed the election of the new Colombian president, Alvaro Uribe, who is now taking steps to further militarize the country and crack down on workers’ rights.

When Uribe traveled to see his mentors in Washington in late September, U.S. president George Bush hailed him as "a man who told the people of his country that he would work to eradicate terrorism, drug trafficking."

While asserting the right to extradite individuals from Colombia to the United States, Washington has demanded that Uribe guarantee immunity to U.S. military personnel in Colombia from prosecution by the International Criminal Court for any human rights abuses they may be accused of in that country.  
 
 
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