But not quite yet–and not, perhaps, until the 73 members of Colombia’s Constitutional Assembly finish rewriting the national Constitution in early July. The reason for this delay is simple: the Assembly is almost sure to abolish the right of other countries to extradite Colombian criminal suspects. Escobar, the reputed chief of a shadowy group of narcoterrorists calling themselves “Los Extraditables,” is wanted many times over on various drug charges in the United States. He has been on the run from government forces for more than two years, and he knows that many of his closest confederates have been killed in a drug war promoted and supported by Washington. He also knows that Colombians tend to see cocaine as America’s problem and that they welcome the prospect of a negotiated truce between the government and Los Extraditables. So he is waiting, in one of his many hideouts, for the terms of his surrender to be accepted and for the lenient treatment that is being offered to him and his confederates to become law.

This is big news in Colombia–and it is news that may have powerful implications for the United States. The idea of a cease-fire with the Medellin cartel is President Cesar Gaviria’s official policy: it is supported by many in the ruling Liberal Party and, probably, by most of the war-weary nation. Gaviria offered reduced prison sentences and nonextradition to traffickers who surrender, confess to at least one crime and accept a rudimentary form of justice-at least some prison time, albeit in specially built luxury prisons. The question now is whether Gaviria’s truce will force the cartels out of business, or whether it merely means the end of narcoterrorism in Colombia. If it is the latter, the drug-war strategy announced by George Bush two years ago will almost certainly end in failure-for the administration strategy has always implicitly depended on reducing the supply of cocaine from Colombia.

It is fair to say the Bush administration is watching developments in Colombia with a measure of concern. The State Department agrees that Colombia has every right to abolish extradition, and one administration source concedes that the United States is only “a minor player” in the drama now unfolding in Bogota. “The main question,” says another U.S. official, “is whether justice is really going to be done, given the Colombian justice system. There are some uncertainties.” One uncertainty is whether Escobar and his associates will get more than a couple of years in jail-but the real question, from the U.S. point of view, is whether the cartels will stop producing and smuggling cocaine. Optimists point out that the Gaviria government has steadily improved its record in rooting out the cartels’ labs and secret airstrips and that the reported totals of finished cocaine seized by Colombian authorities are rising every year. But no one thinks the industry has been crushed: in fact, the State Department estimates that the overall tonnage of cocaine smuggled out of Colombia this year probably will be higher than ever.

That gloomy estimate is the main reason why many veterans of the cocaine wars are now bitterly critical of both the Gaviria government and the Bush administration. In Colombia, despite the national euphoria that narcoterrorism is ending, hard-liners regard the truce as nothing more than appeasement. “We are walking blindfolded toward the abyss,” said El Espectador, Colombia’s second largest newspaper. “The president appears to have abandoned power … and we are giving up, piece by piece, the rule of law and dismantling the moral order of the country.” A senior official of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said, “These guys are coming in for what amounts to house arrest. If that’s not peace at any price, what is?” And Richard Gregorie, the former assistant U.S. attorney in Miami who indicted Manuel Noriega, said the reported deal “stinks ….. I just don’t know that [Colombian authorities] are capable of doing anything about the traffickers, " Gregorie said. “And since we, the United States, can’t seem to come up with a coherent or consistent policy either, I guess the whole thing is over.” That verdict may turn out to be premature–but so far, at least, the godfathers of the international empire of cocaine have good reason to regard it as fact.