Pubdate: Tue, 28 May 2002
Source: Wall Street Journal (US)
Copyright: 2002 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.wsj.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/487
Author: Marc Lifsher

PRESIDENT-ELECT ALVARO URIBE WINS BY BIG MARGIN; SEEKS U.S. SUPPORT

BOGOTA, Colombia -- President-elect Alvaro Uribe Monday promised to 
turn a convincing victory into a mandate for jump-starting the 
economy, promoting social justice and pursuing a hard line against 
both leftist guerrillas and rightist paramilitaries.

While Mr. Uribe threatened to take the initiative against the 
guerrillas in this Andean nation's 38-year civil war, he also offered 
to talk peace and said he's planning to ask United Nations Secretary 
General Kofi Annan to mediate an end to the conflict.

Mr. Uribe, a 49-year-old independent who has been a mayor and state 
governor, won 53% of the vote against 31.7% for leading challenger 
Horacio Serpa of the social-democratic Liberal Party. The wide margin 
frees him from facing a second round of voting and lets him focus on 
planning for after he takes office on Aug. 7.

Central to those plans, Mr. Uribe said at a news conference, is a 
commitment from the U.S. to provide Colombia with the technical and 
financial assistance it needs to fight drug trafficking. He also 
wants help to go on the offensive against the three insurgent armies 
that roam vast portions of the rugged, sparsely populated Colombian 
countryside. "Colombia has been a partner in the battle of the United 
States against terrorism," Mr. Uribe said. "We need the United 
States' help to preserve our democracy ... we can no longer suffer 
terrorism."

Fighting terrorism, he said, means sending more soldiers and police 
against the 17,000-strong Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or 
FARC guerrillas, and the 6,500 troops of the smaller Popular 
Liberation Army, or ELN by its Spanish initials. Colombia's 60,000 
combat troops must also confront a right-wing paramilitary army, the 
Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, which fields about 9,000 heavily 
armed fighters.

To meet that challenge, Mr. Uribe plans to double the size of the 
army's front-line forces and the national police. Additionally, he 
would create a million-person militia to help the armed forces keep 
track of insurgent activities. International human-rights 
organizations warn that such groups could easily turn into deadly 
vigilante groups. Bolstering public security, he said, is essential 
to ending the violence plaguing Colombia, with 3,500 kidnappings and 
34,000 murders each year.

Mr. Uribe said he is also counting on the administration of President 
George W. Bush to help secure credit from the International Monetary 
Fund, World Bank and other lenders so Colombia can expand its stalled 
economy, create jobs and fund health and education programs. "We will 
not cut social spending," he vowed. Mr. Bush, he said, could give 
Colombians an alternative to the drug trade by keeping pressure on 
Congress to complete passage of the Andean Trade Preferences Act. The 
law, first approved a decade ago, eliminates duties on most Colombian 
goods, such as cut flowers and textiles.

For its part, the U.S. seems eager to help Mr. Uribe. Ambassador Anne 
Patterson visited the victor's campaign headquarters just hours after 
polls closed Sunday night. "Colombia and the U.S. have many big 
issues to deal with, drug trafficking, human rights and the fight 
against terrorism," she said.

The U.S. has provided Colombia with nearly $2 billion in mainly 
military aid over the past two years. The money pays for troop 
training and transport helicopters. More aid designed to protect 
vital infrastructure, such as crude-oil pipelines, currently is 
moving through the congressional appropriations process.

Mr. Uribe specifically asked the U.S. to renew a program that 
provides Colombia with radar-surveillance information and 
communications coordination to interdict unidentified aircraft that 
might be carrying drugs . Such cooperation has been suspended since 
neighboring Peru mistakenly shot down a plane carrying U.S. 
missionaries in the Amazon in April 2001. He also said he would ask 
both the U.S. and Mexico to better seal their borders against the 
flow of Colombian cocaine and heroin.

The fighting, Mr. Uribe insists, will be done by Colombian, not U.S., 
troops. Gustavo Castro, a former minister and Uribe supporter, says 
the guerrillas can be beaten with the kind of determination being 
shown by the new president. "We can isolate them, cut off their 
supplies and deny them their sanctuaries," he said. But tough talk 
about doubling the army and increasing the war is "pie in the sky," 
warned Herbert Braun, a Colombian who teaches history at the 
University of Virginia. Mr. Uribe, he said, has presented "no facts, 
no plans and no programs ... about who's going to fight this war and 
how it's going to be fought."
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