COLOMBIANS ELECT HARD-LINER

Vote Reflects Anti-Rebel Feelings

Bogota, Colombia --- Exhausted by 38 years of bloody war, voters in
Colombia on Sunday decisively chose a new president, Alvaro Uribe, who
promises to expand the country's army and police and seek more U.S. aid to
defeat one of the world's oldest leftist insurgencies.

With more than 96 percent of precincts counted, Uribe had won about 53
percent of the vote, with Liberal Party candidate Horacio Serpa ---
considered more moderate --- a distant second with about 31 percent.

Uribe, 49, was an underdog who bolted from the Liberal Party and gained
strength by promising a "firm hand" to combat the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia, the FARC.

The 17,000-strong FARC was born in the 1960s as an armed uprising against
Colombia's glaring inequality and history of political oppression. The
rebels are now widely viewed as criminals who recruit children to fight,
commit assassinations, kidnap people for ransom and profit from Colombia's
cocaine trafficking.

Uribe called on violent groups to heed his promise to begin, starting
today, the pursuit of internationally mediated negotiations as long as
armed groups abandon all terrorism.

Before Uribe offered his victory speech Sunday night, U.S. Ambassador Anne
Patterson arrived at his headquarters to speak privately to the
president-elect, who takes office in August.

The rebels had vowed to disrupt the election, blowing up bridges and energy
towers and killing a woman Sunday by dynamiting an election headquarters in
the northern city of San Luis.

Many Uribe supporters, weary of war and soaring unemployment, endorsed the
possibility of a military buildup and a broader war if it means weakening
the FARC.

In February, current President Andres Pastrana's 3-year-old attempt to
negotiate a peace with the well-armed rebels collapsed. With U.S. aid,
Pastrana also beefed up Colombia's military, especially to fight drug
trafficking.

But many Colombians now believe he made a mistake to cede a
Switzerland-sized piece of southern Colombia to rebels as a gesture to
start talks.

Pastrana is constitutionally precluded from running for re-election.

Even during peace talks, the FARC engaged in almost daily bloody clashes
with government soldiers.

To fight the FARC, Uribe has pledged to double the size of Colombia's army
and national police, raising taxes on businesses if necessary.

More controversial is Uribe's proposal to create a 1 million-strong
citizens' network of tipsters, who would assist the police and national
police, who are also supposed to fight right-wing anti-FARC paramilitaries
and cocaine traffickers.