Meanwhile, Bogotá was witnessing a new variety of protest demonstration: dozens of `reinserted' fighters clamouring at the offices of the Programa de Atención Humanitaria al Desmovilizado (PAHD) for the payment of the subsidies they had been promised. The government has had to admit that the `reinsertion' programme has run short of cash. `The truth,' says interior minister Sabas Pretelt, `is the number of people [applying to join] has been much greater than we had expected'. There are approximately 2,500 `reinserted' fighters already on the roster. The figures are likely to swell even more as the scope of government attention widens to embrace those who have been captured by the security forces. The official tally of captured members of paramilitary organisations is 2,790 since the beginning of the year; 313 in November alone. Another problem entirely is what to do with organisations that claim to have demobilised but continue to operate. Until last week the government was dismissive of charges that the Bloque Cacique Nutibara (BCN) remained active in areas around Medellín and in other parts of Antioquia. On 15 December the national police confirmed at least one instance of this: the murder of a town councillor in the rural village of Las Balsas. The drugs connection
There has also been confirmation that the paramilitary interpretation of involvement in drug-trafficking is somewhat flexible. The leader of the Bloque Centauros (the second-largest member organisation of the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, AUC), who goes by the nom-de-guerre Jorge, acknowledged in a press interview that in areas under his control, coca-growing is tolerated. `We only collect from the buyers,' he said, `but we tell [the farmers] to plant their other crops far from the coca, so as to avoid the effects of fumigation.' He said this almost in the same breath as he professed obedience to the AUC commitment to eschew all involvement in the drugs trade, and he condemned a rival paramilitary organisation operating in Meta, the Autodefensas Campesinas del Casanare, of continuing links with drug traffickers. Extradition
The overall leaders of the AUC, Carlos Castaño and Salvatore Mancuso, last week reiterated both their commitment to demobilisation and their demand not to be extradited to the US. They suggested that such a course of action would be tolerated by Washington, citing a statement by US ambassador William Wood to the effect that ' the Colombian government is autonomous, and that even in the case of the extradition of members of the autodefensas, it is the Colombian government that decides unilaterally'.
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