COLOMBIANS TRAVEL MORE FREELY AS LEADER'S POLICIES PAY OFF

HONDA, Colombia, Aug. 7 - A year ago, Carlos Roa, like any
middle-class businessman from Bogotá, would not have dared venture
onto the highway between Bogota and Medellín that winds past this
baking-hot town in the Magdalena River valley.

This central region of copper-colored canyons and fields of scrub
grass had, after all, been guerrilla country, where leftist rebels
often kidnapped middle-class Colombians who traveled out of the city.
But today, Mr. Roa drove past here and beyond without a hint of worry,
just another member of a 120-car convoy escorted by heavily armed
policemen on high-powered motorcycles.

"I had stopped traveling because of the risks," said Mr. Roa, 40,
wiping the sweat off his brow after stopping at a roadside stand. "You
feel like you are taking back the countryside, like it is ours again."

The caravans, like so many security measures introduced in recent
months, were a brainstorm of President Álvaro Uribe, the
Oxford-educated technocrat who was inaugurated a year ago after
pledging to make this country safer.

Colombia is still a violence-racked nation, causing deep concern to
policy makers in Washington. But increasingly Mr. Uribe's policies -
from sending more troops into the field to installing civilian
intelligence networks to creating a war tax to pay for a military
buildup - appear to be working. Kidnappings for the first six months
of this year have dropped 26 percent, and homicides have fallen by 23
percent, compared with the same period last year.

Colombia's vast fields of coca, the plant used to make cocaine, have
decreased by 15 percent, the first sign of success in the United
States' three-year, $2.5 billion effort to stem drug production. Mr.
Uribe has also embarked on nascent peace talks with right-wing
paramilitary militias, a process that could remove those violent
insurgent groups from a 39-year-old conflict.

As a result, Mr. Uribe's popularity rating, at 70 percent in one
recent poll, is the highest for any leader of a major Latin American
country save for Néstor Kirchner, Argentina's new president.

No one suggests that Colombia, a major regional ally of the United
States, is yet safe. More than 11,000 people were killed nationwide in
the first six months of the year; Marxist rebels continue to control
wide swaths of countryside; and armed groups have abducted more than
1,000 people since January. Terror bombings in rural areas are not
uncommon. [In the past three days at least six people have been killed
in three separate car bombings, Agence France-Presse reported.]

Human rights groups also say that Mr. Uribe has failed to cut ties
between the army and the paramilitary death squads, and they worry
that antiterrorism legislation the president proposes could lead to
rights abuses.

Still, Mr. Uribe's programs have for the first time given people in
this country of 42 million a glimmer of hope after years of political
and criminal violence that brought Colombia to the edge of chaos.

American officials from President Bush to Secretary of State Colin L.
Powell have showered Mr. Uribe with praise while promising more aid.
Indeed, the Bush administration is likely to provide an additional
$700 million in mostly military assistance next year. "The results of
a year of his hard work are, I would say, breathtakingly impressive,"
said John Walters, the White House drug policy chief. "I don't think
there is another period of time in the last 25 to 50 years where you
see this kind of change for the better."

Political experts say Mr. Uribe has drawn support by adopting a style
and method of governing that has broken with the laid-back approach of
past presidents.

His is a workaholic administration. Mr. Uribe is often at his desk
before dawn. He also pushes his aides and cabinet ministers hard,
going so far as to demand, publicly, better results.

Mr. Uribe is also known for sometimes quirky, symbolic acts that have
struck a chord with Colombians. Last month, he moved his entire
cabinet to Colombia's most violent province for three days to
demonstrate that he could govern in the most ungovernable of regions.
On weekends, he presides over town hall meetings where Colombians can
call in as they watch on television to complain directly to the president.

Critics say his style reigns over substance. But many political
experts who closely follow this government say that Mr. Uribe is
obsessed with seeing improvements.

"There is a blend of symbolism, but there are clearly results," said
Michael Shifter, a senior analyst for the Inter-American Dialogue, a
Washington-based policy group. "He's not somebody who could easily be
accused of being interested in image and illusion. He's the most
practical guy, and is interested in tangible, concrete results."

The results can, to be sure, be seen along this highway, which winds
through fog-shrouded Andean mountains from Bogotá to the country's
most important river valley. In recent years, with rebels running
rampant, roadside business had dried up as travelers avoided the highway.

But today, a holiday on which Colombians celebrated a decisive battle
in the war for independence, restaurants bustled with travelers and
shop owners did a brisk business selling sodas and trinkets,
attributing it to the government-organized caravans, which leave urban
areas at appointed times on holiday weekends.

"The guerrillas no longer come out," said Ramiro Ocampo, 39, the
owner of the Campoverde Hotel in the town of Doradal, where dozens of
motorists stopped for lunch. "The army is all over the place now, so
it is much, much safer."