BOGOTA, Dec. 7 (Xinhuanet) -- Salvatore Mancuso, top leader of theright-wing paramilitary organization United Self-Defense Forces ofColombia (AUC), confirmed Tuesday he would turn in weapons along with 1,600 followers on Friday as agreed in a peace deal with the government.

    Mancuso said he will surrender arms along with 1,600 combatantsof the "Catatumbo Bloc" in Turbo, 600 kilometers northeast of Bogota, and then go to a demobilization zone in the northern province of Cordoba.

    The government and the AUC agreed in May to create the 368-square-km concentration zone, where disarmed AUC members are protected by government troops and exempted from prosecution. But they could not leave without government authorization.

    Mancuso's statement came two weeks after a Supreme Court ruled to authorize his extradition to the United States to face drug charges. Many feared he would not finally fulfill the disbanding commitment for rejection to the extradition.

    Friday's ceremony will be part of a peace agreement Colombian Peace Commissioner Luis Carlos Restrepo announced on Nov. 3, that calls for all 20,000 AUC fighters to return to civilian life by the end of 2006.

    Restrepo and officials from the Organization of American Stateswill oversee the ceremony to be held in a rural estate.

    The AUC was established in the 1980s by drug traffickers and land owners to fight leftist guerrillas in areas where government troops had little control. It has been active in northern Colombia,particularly in the areas of Antioquia and Cordoba.

    Its demobilization is widely seen a positive step to ease Colombia's civil war, the longest in Latin America, which kills about 3,500 people a year on average.

    The first batch of 450 AUC fighters turned in their guns to government in the northwestern town of Turbo on Nov. 25. Enditem