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."