Off the Hook? U.S. officials are worried that Uribe may let paramilitary drug kingpins go free.(Cover Story)

Byline: Joseph Contreras and Steven Ambrus

The swarthy, 65-year-old warlord cut an odd figure in his dark business suit, white dress shirt and red striped tie. And when it was time for Ramon Isaza to address a session of the Colombian Congress last week, the paramilitary supremo asked a lawmaker to deliver his prepared remarks. But the significance of the occasion was in no way diminished: Isaza, who is wanted for drug trafficking in Colombia, and two fellow paramilitary leaders, accused of murder in their native land, had been allowed to visit the capital city of Bogota on a 48-hour safe-conduct pass issued by the government of President Alvaro Uribe. Only a week prior to their appearance--where they asked for immunity from prosecution and extradition in exchange for pacifying their militias--a force of 50 U.S.-trained anti-narcotics policemen had raided a cocaine lab allegedly belonging to Isaza and seized 850 kilos of the drug. But that in no way dampened the enthusiasm of some pro-Uribe lawmakers over the paramilitary leaders' unprecedented visit. "This country is bleeding to death," said Congresswoman Eleanora Pineda. "What it wants is peace."

But at what price? That's a question that some Colombians and not a few U.S. officials are asking themselves as the Uribe government completes its second year in office. Until the fairly recent past, the Colombian president had been receiving rave reviews within the Bush administration as the exterminating angel of the Washington-financed war on drugs. It wasn't always so: for years Uribe was dogged by accusations of links to drug traffickers--a charge he's denied in the past--and his name surfaced in a 1991 U.S. military-intelligence report about Colombia's notorious Medellin cartel (box). But a record 140 suspected narcotics traffickers have been extradited to the United States since Uribe was sworn in as president, and a massive aerial-fumigation program destroyed 30,000 hectares of planted coca fields between 2002 and last year. Last month Colombian police seized eight tons of cocaine with a U.S. street value of $160 million--their biggest haul in six years--and the eradication campaign also reduced opium-poppy cultivation by 15 percent in 2003.

Uribe's decision to begin peace talks with right-wing militias, however, has gone over badly with some U.S. officials. Some of the groups' senior commanders have been indicted by federal prosecutors on charges of drug trafficking, and last week's televised spectacle in Congress only seemed to make matters worse. "It's a bit strange," said U.S. Ambassador to Colombia William Wood, "that in Congress, where they write the laws, approve the laws and defend the laws, you would also find those who break the laws."

Bogota's policy of seeking a negotiated settlement with the paramilitary Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) comes as no surprise to longtime Uribe watchers. When he was governor of Antioquia department in the mid-1990s, right-wing militias operated with virtual impunity in rural areas and killed dozens of trade unionists and suspected sympathizers of Marxist guerrilla movements. Paramilitary chieftain Salvatore Mancuso publicly hailed Uribe's victory in the 2002 presidential election, and he was one of the three warlords invited to speak before Congress. Mounting evidence of the para-military forces' involvement in drug trafficking has led U.S. officials to seek the extradition of Mancuso and four of his comrades in arms. But that has not deterred Uribe from ceding a zone of land to paramilitary forces, where they are immune from extradition so long as they continue talking with his government. "A peace process is worth the trouble if there is an intention to reform," Uribe said in a recent radio interview. "[That] must represent a severing of all activities connected to drug trafficking."

That may prove to be an impossible demand to fulfill in practice. Uribe ...