COLOMBIA VOTE PUTS REBELS ON NOTICE

Latin America: Hard-Liner Uribe Becomes Next President After Promising To
Step Up The War Against The Nation's Leftist Guerrillas.

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Colombians elected as their next president Sunday a
hard-liner who promised to aggressively confront this nation's leftist
guerrillas, an option that promises to broaden the country's bloody
internal war.

With 98% of the vote counted, conservative career politician Alvaro Uribe
had won almost 53% of the ballots, enough to avoid a runoff election. His
major opponents conceded defeat.

Uribe's accession to the presidency of this war-torn nation appears to
augur a new and more dangerous stage in Colombia's civil war, which has
grown increasingly violent since the collapse of peace talks earlier this
year. A stepped-up war would destabilize the region, encourage increased
U.S. military intervention and threaten Latin America's oldest democracy
with economic and social chaos.

Uribe, 49, who did not campaign in public after surviving numerous
assassination attempts, appeared exhausted as he addressed the media late
Sunday night. His face wan, his eyes red, he seemed to choke up as he
referred to his father, killed by guerrillas during a botched kidnapping
attempt 19 years ago. He promised the nation peace through strength.

"Reinforcing the military is going to be a necessary road for the
protection of our citizens and the total recovery of human rights," Uribe
said. "The international community must know that Colombia has expressed
its willingness to return to civility, to restore order."

Uribe also pledged educational and economic reform, and said he would
attack rampant corruption. But achieving security, he said, was key. He
promised to ask the guerrillas to negotiate, but only if they gave up
terrorist attacks and laid down their arms.

The guerrillas have consistently rejected calls for a cease-fire.

"From this moment on, we are going to enact our beliefs in order to achieve
democratic security for everyone," Uribe said. "Security so they don't
kidnap the businessman, they don't kill the union leader, they don't extort
the ranch owner, or the field hand."

Uribe's chief opponent, Horacio Serpa appeared late Sunday at a convention
center to acknowledge Uribe's victory. A traditional party machine
politician, Serpa was a distant second with 31.7% of the nearly 11 million
votes cast. Turnout was estimated at 46% of eligible voters.

Serpa, who had accused Uribe of receiving support from the country's
right-wing paramilitaries, warned Colombians that a broader war was coming.

"I warned this country about the dangers of authoritarianism and all-out
war," Serpa said as he stood surrounded by his wife, children and
supporters. "The future of Colombia cannot be in war."

Other opponents also conceded that Uribe would become Colombia's 43rd
president, taking office in August.

Luis Eduardo Garzon, a former golf caddie universally known as "Lucho," won
a surprising third place with 6.2% of the vote as the head of a left-wing
coalition that insisted on negotiations as the only viable solution to the
conflict.

He recognized Uribe's victory but promised to continue fighting for peace
with his new party, known as the Democratic Pole. Noemi Sanin, the
fourth-place finisher with 5.8% of the vote, also acknowledged Uribe's victory.

"Peace is an indisputable condition for development," said Garzon, later
adding: "We are not going to have anything to do with war."

U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson showed up at Uribe's campaign headquarters
to congratulate him, saying the U.S. would have "very close" relations with
Uribe, who has studied at Oxford and Harvard.

Uribe's victory was the first time since implementation of the country's
1991 constitution that any president has won outright in the first round.
Analysts interpreted the results as a stunning show of support in a crowded
field of four major candidates.

It also bodes well for Uribe's ambitious center-right reform program to
improve the military, government and public services.

The diminutive politician wants to double the size of Colombia's military.
He also plans to create a million-member-strong citizen patrol force to
warn of attacks by the rebels and paramilitaries.

Uribe is seeking direct U.S. funding of the conflict; American aid has been
confined to drug-fighting efforts. The Bush administration has already
proposed such a change in part of this year's $657-million aid package to
Colombia.

Uribe has also proposed slashing the size of Congress, cutting tariffs and
opening hundreds of new schools.

"It's a clear mandate for Uribe," said Pablo Franky, a political analyst at
Javeriana University. "I believe it's overwhelming."

Other analysts were less sure. Uribe, running as an independent, is facing
a legislature filled with hard-core members of the country's traditional
Liberal Party.

He will also have a hard time implementing his reforms. Colombia's economy
is suffering, with public debt now equal to nearly half the GDP.
Unemployment hovers at about 20%, and more than half the population lives
in poverty.

"Uribe has no political organization. He can't count on anything," said
Elisabeth Ungar, an analyst with the University of the Andes.

But for many Colombians, such concerns were secondary to a more aggressive
stance against the guerrillas as a way to halt a conflict that costs 3,500
lives a year, the vast majority civilians killed by either rebels or
paramilitaries.

Outgoing President Andres Pastrana, who is constitutionally barred from
seeking reelection, pursued three years of peace talks with the guerrillas.
They ended in failure, with the rebels having used the time and a special
demilitarized zone created for the talks to prepare for combat and solidify
their control of the cocaine trade that funds their war.

Uribe "knows how to lead with weapons, not words," said Ciro Mansalve, 70,
who braved pouring rain in Bogota, the capital, to vote for Uribe. "Get rid
of the guerrillas, get rid of the war."

Colombians needed no reminder of the cost of the conflict in the weeks and
months leading up to the elections.

One candidate, Ingrid Betancourt, was kidnapped and remained in captivity
Sunday. Local governors, congressional representatives and mayors were
kidnapped or killed during the campaign.

Three weeks ago, guerrillas fighting paramilitaries in a forgotten corner
of the country launched a homemade rocket that killed 119 people seeking
refuge in a church.

In the days immediately before the vote, the sound of car bombs and gunfire
reverberated throughout the country. Rebels blew up bridges, knocked down
power lines and blocked major roads.

Both guerrillas and paramilitaries menaced the mostly rural populations
they dominate. They burned voting cards and threatened to disrupt
elections. Overall, however, voting proceeded smoothly Sunday, a remarkable
fact given that the rebels control about 40% of the national territory,
most of it in sparsely populated rural areas.

A massive show of more than 210,000 police and military troops kept
violence to a minimum. On Sunday, rebels from the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia, or FARC, burned voting materials in five of the
country's 1,000 counties.

About 20% of the voting booths in rural areas had to be moved into cities
for security.

Voters lined up in searing heat and pouring rain, from this country's vast
lowland jungles to the fog-shrouded Andes.

Not everyone was happy with Uribe's victory. While Uribe won the vote in 21
of Colombia's 32 departments and one capital district, Serpa won in some of
its poorest.

Serpa's support was strongest along the Caribbean coast where the Liberal
Party has long held sway, but he also won many departments on Colombia's
vast eastern plains, where rebels have long been strong and government
services are nearly nonexistent.

"For us, [Uribe] represents the rich. We are the poor.... Peace interests
us more than anything," said Bonifacio Chicunque, a member of the Kamentxa
indigenous tribe who is originally from Putumayo, where most of Colombia's
cocaine is grown.

Human rights groups worried that Uribe's victory and his support of a
strong military might encourage more violence by paramilitaries, many of
whom are thought to support him.