COLOMBIA'S NEW CHIEF ASKS U.N. AID PEACE TALKS OVERSIGHT WITH REBELS SOUGHT

Bogota, Colombia --- Less than 24 hours after a resounding victory,
Colombian President-elect Alvaro Uribe said he has already contacted
the United Nations about the possibility of internationally
supervised talks to end the country's 38-year-old armed leftist
insurgency.

Negotiations can only take place if the rebels accept a cease-fire
and halt all terrorism, Uribe told foreign journalists here on Monday.

Uribe, an anti-rebel hard-liner who takes office Aug. 7, was elected
Sunday by voters fed up with four decades of violent upheaval rooted
in Colombia's economic inequalities and its illicit narcotics trade.

The slight, stern, bespectacled Uribe told reporters he hoped the
United States would play a special role in continuing to beef up his
country's military. But he said he also hopes the United States will
use its influence as a board member of the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund to help Colombia renegotiate its debt
payments so it can spend more on social programs.

"Colombia has been a partner of the battle of the United States
against terrorism," said Uribe, a former Antioquia state governor who
narrowly escaped an assassination attempt on April 14.

"The violence we are suffering is terrorism. Therefore we need the
reciprocity, we need the help of the United States to preserve our
democracy," Uribe said. "We will do what we have to do with our
soldiers, with our men, with our women, but we need technological
assistance. . . helicopters, etc."

Uribe wants to double the size of the professional army to more than
100,000 and national police to roughly 200,000 and enlist 1 million
civilians to act as tipsters for security forces. Human rights groups
have criticized the proposal, saying it will endanger civilians by
making them targets of armed groups.

But Uribe, whose father was killed by leftist rebels, said Colombians
are already targets in this country's enduring violence.

The United States has already invested nearly $2 billion in
assistance to fight drug trafficking in Colombia in recent years. The
U.S. Senate will now consider whether to offer more aid and lift
restrictions so Colombia can use assistance directly in the fight
against the rebels.

Because war-damaged Colombia suffers from an 18 percent unemployment
rate, with 57 percent of the population living in poverty, Uribe said
it is imperative that his government increase social spending.

Colombia, he said, merits special international attention because
drug traffickers, who supply U.S. consumers with cocaine and other
drugs, cause much of this nation's violence.

All of Colombia's armed rebel groups, from the left and the right,
are said to finance themselves with profits from drug trafficking.

Colombia's largest left-wing rebel group was formed in the early
1960s and is called the Revolutionary Armed Forces, or the FARC. The
rebels are now said to finance themselves largely with kidnappings
and the cocaine trade.

An anti-FARC paramilitary movement, the United Self-Defense Forces,
has also victimized Colombians and, like the FARC, is on the United
States' list of terrorist organizations. The paramilitaries are also
said to profit from the cocaine trade.

On average, about 34,000 Colombians a year are killed in violence.

Current President Andres Pastrana negotiated with the FARC for three
years, allowing the rebels to occupy a large piece of southern
Colombia as a gesture of peace. But the rebels continued to kidnap
people and wage violence during the talks, which Pastrana broke off
in February. Pastrana was constitutionally precluded from being
re-elected.

Uribe said he wants to improve security in Colombia by reforming the
justice system to allow the military and police more speed and
flexibility to conduct raids and arrest suspects.

He also said he wants to crack down on paramilitary groups and exact
a promise that they will "not kill one more Colombian." To stamp out
the cultivation of crops for the drug trade, he wants to persuade
peasants to stop growing coca leaves and poppies by offering them
each $2,000 to $2,500 a year.

"Most important is our offer of democratic security," Uribe said, "so
the guerrillas, tomorrow, when they want to, can start to do politics
without guns or without [fear of] getting killed."