Drug lords declared they would keep killing government officials following the assassination of leading presidential hopeful Luis Carlos Galan. Tens of thousands of mourners on Saturday flocked to Galan's coffin.
"Now the fight is with blood," said the Medellin Cartel in a brief communique broadcast by the RCN radio network and printed by the Bogota daily La Prensa.The cartel, the world's largest cocaine ring, is believed responsible for 80 percent of the cocaine smuggled into the United States.
"We do want peace. We have screamed for it, but we will not beg for it," the statement said. It was signed "The Extraditables," a reference to the traffickers likely to be extradited to the United States.
The statement did not specifically claim responsibility for Galan's death but said the group would keep killing officials. Police blamed the drug lords, who had offered a $500,000 reward for his death and had tried to kill him Aug. 5 in Medillin.
Galan was shot and killed Friday in Soache, 12 miles from Bogota, as he prepared to address 10,000 people at a campaign rally.
In the attack by at least seven gunmen, local councilman Julio Cesar Penalosa was killed and at least six others wounded. The gunmen escaped. Police said Saturday they had detained three suspects but did not name them.
Hours earlier, drug lords shot and killed a provincial police chief, Franklin Quintero.
Responding to the killings, President Virgilio Barco on Friday announced a harsh crackdown. He said in a nationwide television and radio address he would use his powers under the nation's state of siege to re-establish a treaty with the United States to extradite suspected traffickers.
The state of emergency was declared in 1984 because of drug trafficking and guerrilla activity.
The Supreme Court threw out the extradition treaty in April 1988 on a technicality.
President Bush said Saturday the United States is prepared to coordinate "as expeditiously as possible" the extradition of suspected Colombian drug dealers.
"We in the United States should not forget that others are paying very high costs for the unchecked rampage of the international criminals trafficking in cocaine and undermining the lives of law-abiding citizens," Bush said in a statement issued from Kennebunkport, Maine, where he is vacationing.
Barco consistently has refused to negotiate with the drug lords, who have never made their demands known.
In his speech, he cautioned Colombians they should be prepared "to experience more pain and sufferings" in what he called the "war against the nation" unleashed by drug rings.
The government sent an elite police command to the drug-bastion city of Medellin, and the army was placed under alert. This means the army can be called any time into action anywhere in the country.
Galan, 46, presidential candidate of the Liberal Party, was leading by wide margins in opinion polls for planned presidential elections in May 1990.
A journalist who later became a politician, Galan favored extraditing drug traffickers, saying it was instrumental to their defeat.
Aware of threats against him, Galan wore a bullet-proof vest while attending public meetings.The vest shielded him from three bullets but a fourth killed him, according to a forensic report.