BOGOTA (Reuter) Foreign Minister Maria Emma Mejia said she
hoped to see a change in U.S. drug policy before next year, when
the White House will decide whether to ``decertify'' Colombia
for a third time as an ally in the drug war.

Mejia conceded that congressional passage of a bill that
would lift Colombia's sixyearold ban on extradition may not be
enough to take the chill out of U.S.Colombia ties, however.

Mejia spoke in an interview with the Radionet news program
after the extradition bill was approved by the lower house of
Congress on Thursday night. The controversial bill must still
survive an additional four votes in the next session of
Congress, beginning on July 20, before it becomes law.

Colombia faces the threat of punitive U.S. trade sanctions
if the legislation, which was proposed by President Ernesto
Samper under intense pressure from Washington, fails to win
passage.

But, as currently drafted, critics like former chief
prosecutor Alfonso Valdivieso, an antidrug crusader, say the
bill is essentially ``innocuous'' since it would prevent the
extradition of Cali cartel drug kingpins already tried for their
crimes in Colombia.

It also excludes criminals who turn themselves in and would
prevent the extradition of drug lords if they faced stiffer
penalties abroad than they do under Colombia's notoriously lax
justice system.

Alluding to the weakness of the legislation, Mejia said it
was unlikely to produce ``a transformation or a change in our
relations with that country (the United States).''

But she added that the United States, and the international
community, had to recognize the efforts Colombia has made to
crack down on its billion cocaine merchants over the last year,
however, and said extradition was just ``one more tool'' in the
fight against drugs.

Other tools include recent laws dictating stiffer prison
sentences for traffickers and allowing for the seizure of their
wealth and property.

Colombia was decertified in February, for the second
consecutive year, for its alleged failure to clamp down hard
enough on its massive trade in narcotics.

Mejia said the entire decertification process had fallen
under scrutiny in Washington, however, and said she trusted that
it would be ``modified'' substantially by the White House before
next year.

She did not elaborate, but appeared to voice hope that
Colombia would not be hit with trade sanctions even if the
administration of U.S. President Bill Clinton branded it an
outcast nation for a third straight year.

In announcing Colombia's decertification in February,
Washington cited corruption at the highest levels of the
Colombian government and the scandal over Samper's alledgedly
drugfinanced election campaign.