URUGUAY'S CHIEF IS FRANK (AND FRANKLY INSULTING)

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay Jan. 9 -- At 73, President Jorge Batlle likes to say he
is in the Carnelli Station of life -- that is the second to last stop on
the railroad tracks into Montevideo. So he has nothing to lose by speaking
his mind.

And speak his mind he does, challenging all the taboos and sacred cows of
Uruguayan politics in an impetuous style that can be charming but also
shocking and insulting.

Eleven months into the first year of his five-year term, Mr. Batlle
(pronounced BAH-zhay) is the first civilian president since the military
gave up power 15 years ago to promise to search for the remains of
dissidents who disappeared in the 1970's and 1980's in the wake of a nasty
urban guerrilla war. He stunned the army by publicly saluting the mother of
a disappeared dissident in the presidential office and pledging to take her
orders.

When Gen. Manuel Fernandez, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff,
suggested in a newspaper interview last year that the armed forces might
eventually have to intervene in political affairs again to combat leftist
extremists, Mr. Batlle fired him immediately.

The Uruguayan president has tackled the cumbersome welfare state with plans
to infuse private capital into the government telephone company and allow
private imports of natural gas while using his bully pulpit to challenge
Uruguayans to begin to rely more on themselves and embrace the new global
economy. Defying reported death threats, he has begun to challenge powerful
smugglers by overhauling the customs service.

And in recent months, Mr. Batlle has taken his audaciousness onto the world
stage by becoming the first leader of a Latin American country to call for
the legalization of drugs.

"I don't know if drugs kill more than alcohol or tobacco, but I know they
kill thousands on the battlefields of Colombia," he said in an interview in
which he argued that legalization would lower drug prices and cut into the
profits of the cartels. Asked what his solution for the long Colombian
civil war was, he answered, "Legalize drugs and bring Colombia into Nafta,"
the North American Free Trade Agreement that includes the United States,
Canada and Mexico.

Coming from a tiny cattle-producing country of 3.2 million people, Mr.
Batlle's ideas are not likely to carry much weight beyond Uruguay. But he
stands out in a continent where weak, uncreative leadership has become the
rule in most countries over the last few years.

And at a time when Latin Americans are increasingly cynical about their
governments, Mr. Batlle has a habit of driving his own car and, at red
lights, shocking fellow drivers by rolling down his window and asking for
their opinions. Despite a deep recession, an outbreak of foot-and-mouth
disease and a severe drought, his popularity ratings are better than 50
percent in a country known to be hypercritical of its leaders.

"I am the way I am and I am not about to change," Mr. Batlle said in an
interview in which he seemed to bask in his idiosyncrasies by banging his
fist on the desk, tossing a cigar across the room to a friend and
occasionally making points by switching from Spanish to English in a
playfully exaggerated British accent. (He speaks four foreign languages
fluently, and a smattering of Yiddish learned from his childhood nanny.)

Mr. Batlle, whose ancestors came from the Catalonia region of Spain, can
get away with a lot not only because of his age, but because of his
pedigree. His great-grandfather was president, as were his great-uncle, who
founded Latin America's first and most expansive social welfare state, and
his father. He was groomed to be president as a teenager, when his father,
President Luis Batlle Berres, dispatched him to meet foreign ambassadors
and represent him in other official functions in the late 1940's. His
mother, who is still alive, picked out the presidential residence that he
lives in today.

Four times Mr. Batlle ran for president and lost, in large part because of
his habit of shooting off his mouth. But he finally eked out a victory in a
runoff in November 1999.

His first major initiative was to help track down a granddaughter of the
Argentine poet Juan Gelman who was born in captivity after her pregnant
mother was abducted by the Argentine military and was then adopted by an
Uruguayan family. Mr. Gelman did the detective work to find his
granddaughter, and then Mr. Batlle helped out by personally pleading with
her to take a blood test for DNA identification, which showed that she is
in all probability related to Mr. Gelman.

Mr. Batlle appointed a peace commission to locate about 160 disappeared
people, and has promised to take the results personally to their families.
"I felt this was something the country had to confront with a clear voice,"
he said, comparing the issue of the disappeared to "a splinter in your foot
that won't kill you but impedes your ability to walk."

Luz Ibarburu de Recagno, 76, a leader of the Group of Mothers and Family
Members of the Detained- Disappeared whose son went missing in Argentina in
1976, gave Mr. Batlle cautious praise. "You don't need to do much to be
better than our previous presidents, who would not even meet with us," she
said.

Congresswoman Margarita Percovich, a member of the leftist Frente Amplio
opposition, said, "He's opening doors on subjects that were taboo in the
past, and that is good for the country." But she added, "He sometimes acts
and speaks too fast and impulsively without reaching consensus first."

Mr. Batlle can also get carried away with his own glibness and say things
that can be hurtful. While talking about his family history, and how his
ancestors came from the Spanish fishing town and resort of Sitges, he said:
"It was a better place when they lived there. Now it is full of gay Germans."

Challenged to explain his remark, he said: "I prefer normality. I say what
I believe and I am not a hypocrite. In a few words, I like women."

Told that he would certainly receive a lot of mail for his remarks, he
answered: "And I will respond. I don't hide my opinions."