'I HAVE BEEN HONORABLE'

An Interview With Colombian Presidential Candidate Alvaro Uribe Velez

Alvaro Uribe Velez is a man with a short fuse. During an hourlong interview
with NEWSWEEK's Joseph Contreras in a Bogota hotel suite, the 49-year-old
presidential candidate bristled over questions concerning allegations of
past and present supporters' links to drug trafficking. Excerpts:

CONTRERAS: You have called for more U.S. military aid to help Colombia
fight communist guerrillas as well as drug traffickers.

URIBE: I have supported Plan Colombia from the beginning, but we need to
improve it. We also need similar assistance to prevent crimes like
terrorism, kidnapping and massacres. Our natural ally in this area is the
United States. We're not speaking of soldiers. We are talking about [more]
helicopters, trainers, technology and money.

What is your counternarcotics strategy?

The armed forces estimate that 20 planes carrying cocaine fly out of
Colombia daily. Without [the resumption of] interdiction flights, Plan
Colombia will fail. The fight against drugs must also include a social
component for the farmers who plant coca and opium poppies. I am proposing
an agreement with 50,000 peasant families that would give them between
$2,000 and $2,500 a year, provided they stop raising drug crops.

Three years of peace talks with Colombia's largest guerrilla army yielded
no results. How will your government deal with the guerrillas? I don't rule
out negotiations. But the guerrillas will have to accept a ceasefire and
make a commitment to refrain from terrorist activity as preconditions.

The U.S. State Department added Colombia's 8,000-strong right-wing militias
to its list of terrorist groups last year. What policy would your
government adopt toward those outlawed forces? The same as the policy
toward the guerrillas.

As governor of Antioquia state in the mid-1990s, you promoted the creation
of civilian vigilante organizations known as Convivir, and human-rights
groups say that some of them later cooperated with paramilitary units. Do
you regret that policy? We needed to organize civilians in support of
security forces, and none of the Convivir groups in my state deteriorated
into illegal paramilitary forces. There were problems with two of them, and
I immediately suspended their operations.

Some Colombians regard you as the preferred candidate of the paramilitary
groups. I have never met any members of either the paramilitary forces or
the guerrillas. [Paramilitary leader] Carlos Castano has clearly said he
does not know me. I once met [paramilitary supremo ] Salvatore Mancuso many
years ago when he was a cattle rancher but have not spoken with him since
he became a paramilitary member.

But many years ago when you... I won't answer that. If I have links to the
paramilitary groups, file a complaint with the appropriate authorities.

Questions have been raised about some of your political allies. The U.S.
State Department rescinded the visa of Sen. Fuad Char because he was
suspected of laundering money. Fuad Char voted in favor of permitting the
extradition of drug traffickers wanted in the United States. Fuad Char is
an honorable man in his public and private lives.

In 1997 and 1998, agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration [DEA]
seized 50,000 kilos of a chemical precursor used in the processing of
cocaine. Those chemicals had been allegedly purchased by a company
belonging to Pedro Juan Moreno, who served as your cabinet chief when you
were governor of Antioquia. I became aware of that only after my term as
governor ended. If the charges are true, he should go to jail. If they are
groundless, the DEA should rectify that error. I believe that an error was
made in his case.

According to a best-selling book about the drug trade entitled "The Jockeys
of Cocaine," you spoke out on behalf of a low-income housing program in
Medellin that was funded by drug lord Pablo Escobar when you were mayor of
that city in 1982... I asked the attorney general's office to investigate
that matter, and I was completely cleared of those charges. That housing
program was well underway when I became mayor. I had nothing to do with that.

Well-informed sources say that a record number of pilot's licenses and
airstrip construction permits were issued by the civil-aviation authority
when you headed that agency in the 1980s, a period when drug trafficking
was on the rise... Let's not talk further. I see that you have come here to
smear my political career.

Your deputy at the aviation authority was a man named Cesar Villegas, later
sentenced to five years in prison for his links to the Cali cartel and
murdered earlier this month... I refuse to accept that you foreign
correspondents come here to ask me these kinds of questions and repeat
slanders made against me. All I say is this: as a politician, I have been
honorable and accountable. We have nothing else to discuss.