COLOMBIA'S HARD RIGHT

Alvaro Uribe Velez was a dark horse.

Then rebels went on a bloody rampage and Uribe became the presidential
favorite.

Will the hard-liner finally bring peace-or a deadly new escalation?

March 25 issue - Alvaro Uribe Velez-slight and bespectacled-looks more like
a high-school math teacher than a hard-charging ideologue.

But there's nothing wimpy about his message: from the moment he declared
his candidacy for Colombia's 2002 presidential election, the former state
governor promised to halt peace negotiations with the rebel Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and restore law and order. At first, his
tough talk didn't garner much support.

But after languishing in third place in opinion surveys much of last year,
he suddenly took the pole position in January. Now Uribe commands an
approval rating of 59 percent, and it seems nothing short of an assassin's
bullet can stop the maverick politician from winning the May election.

IN A BLOOD-STEEPED country, the rise of a right-wing hard-liner is hardly
surprising. But what is less clear is what Uribe's victory will mean for
Colombia and its increasingly close military ties to the United States. The
Bush administration, fighting to increase American military engagement in
the war against the rebels, will likely welcome a more resolute president
in Bogota. As will most of his countrymen. "Ordinary Colombians who have
grown tired of guerrilla abuses see in Uribe a tough leader with a firm
hand," says former national-security adviser Armando Borrero.

But human-rights activists, civil libertarians and other critics see
something else: another threat to Colombia's besieged democracy.

They claim the heir apparent has too cozy a relationship with Colombia's
disreputable military, a coterie of shady associates, past and present,
with allegations of links to the drug trade hanging over them, and a
penchant for strongman tactics. "Many of [Uribe's] backers support him
because they favor an authoritarian government," says political analyst
Marco Romero of Bogota's National University. "That makes many people worry
that his extreme-right-wing vision of public order may not jibe with
democratic principles."

Uribe actually owes his unprecedented ascent to the guerrillas. Most
Colombians had already run out of patience with the faltering peace process
when the FARC unleashed a fresh offensive in January. They sabotaged
electric pylons, bombed a Bogota restaurant, killing four policemen and a
5-year-old girl, and tried to blow up the main reservoir serving the capital.

In February, four rebels hijacked an airliner and kidnapped a prominent
senator.

Uribe, 49, was already soaring in the polls when a frustrated President
Andres Pastrana finally called off talks with rebels and ordered troops to
retake the haven he had allowed the FARC to occupy in 1998. For millions of
voters, the total collapse of peace talks vindicated Uribe's hard line-and
his run for the presidency.

He had been written off by pundits when he left the ranks of the mainstream
Liberal Party to mount his one-man campaign.

His rivals tried to discredit him early on as the standard-bearer of the
far right in a country where ultraconservative politicians have seldom
occupied the presidential palace.

But that criticism wound up working in Uribe's favor.

Courting voters with the motto "Strong hand, big heart," the veteran
politician from the city of Medellin cast himself as a foe of Colombia's
political establishment who would put national security and law and order
at the top of his agenda.

As the son of a wealthy landowner killed by FARC forces in the 1980s, he
said he never understood how Pastrana could have granted the Marxist rebels
a Switzerland-size enclave without first extracting a ceasefire agreement.

The Bush administration is increasingly concerned about the meltdown in
Colombia. In the final months of the Clinton era, the country became the
third largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid. But the initial $1.3 billion
assistance package was restricted to supporting the Pastrana government's
anti-drug efforts and could not legally be diverted to counterinsurgency
operations. The U.S. Congress feared the money would go to help right-wing
paramilitaries that massacre suspected rebel sympathizers, often with the
support of elements in Colombia's military.

It was always a difficult distinction to maintain in a country where both
the FARC and the right-wing militias are directly involved in the narcotics
trade.

But post-September 11, the Bush White House has pushed to do away with the
restrictions altogether.

The administration recently asked Congress to approve an additional $98
million for the training of a Colombian Army brigade that will defend a key
oil pipeline frequently targeted by guerrillas. Last week the
administration went a step further: spokesman Ari Fleischer disclosed plans
to seek more aid to help Colombia in "its unified campaign against drug
trafficking, terrorism and other threats to its national security." The
Pentagon, for its part, continues to believe that the ultimate political
settlement with leftists will require a centrist leader.

But the view from Washington increasingly is that that can't happen until
the FARC is defeated, or at least contained and demoralized.

More than 100 U.S. troops are currently stationed in Colombia, many of them
engaged in ongoing training of the Colombian Army's three counternarcotics
battalions, and Uribe has called for increased American military aid. He
also wants to see Pastrana's anti-drug Plan Colombia broadened to include
the fight against terrorism, kidnapping, massacres and other endemic ills.
"No country can ignore the kind of terrorist attacks against a democratic
society that are taking place in Colombia," Uribe told NEWSWEEK last week.
"The state cannot allow [armed] groups to kill citizens or take part in
drug trafficking, and that's why I'm asking for more international help,
beginning with the United States."

Narcotics and terrorism will rank high on the agenda when President George
W. Bush sits down with the leaders of Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Bolivia
at a summit in Lima later this week. (Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was
not invited because of Washington's displeasure over his harsh criticism of
the U.S. bombing campaign in Afghanistan.) The U.S.-backed anti-drug
campaign is yielding mixed results in the Andean region. According to
Colombian police and United Nations figures, coca-leaf production in
Colombia fell by 13 percent overall in 2001, thanks mainly to an aggressive
aerial fumigation program that killed off more than 190,000 acres of coca
bushes.

But there are strong signs that coca and opium-poppy cultivation is booming
in neighboring Peru, fueled in part by Colombian drug lords who are feeling
the heat of Plan Colombia.

Uribe says he will turn it up. He points out that nearly 5,000 acres of
coca and opium farms were eradicated in his native state of Antioquia in
central Colombia during his three-year term as governor. But allegations
have been made against some of his associates and close political allies
that raise questions in the minds of many observers of Colombian politics
about his credentials as Washington's next partner in the war on drugs.

A man known for his strong sense of loyalty, Uribe fiercely defends the
reputation of longtime friends like Pedro Juan Moreno, a 59-year-old
Medellin businessman who was his right-hand man after Uribe became governor
in 1995. Two years later the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)
seized three large shipments of potassium permanganate-commonly used in the
processing of cocaine-that had been bought by Moreno's chemicals company.

The industrialist said the DEA had acted on the basis of false information
supplied by senior Colombian police officials Moreno accused of waging a
political vendetta against him. Moreno was never indicted in the United
States or Colombia, and Uribe has consistently stood by his former cabinet
chief, who also happens to be a distant relative of the candidate's wife,
Lina Moreno. A number of Colombian journalists have dredged up similar
personalities from Uribe's past, but none has come close to derailing his
runaway victory.

An accomplished horseman and father of two sons, Uribe will never be
mistaken for an extremist thug. He began his career of public service at
the age of 24 in the Antioquia state bureaucracy and has been elected to a
series of offices ranging from city councilman to national senator.

Along the way, Uribe completed courses of study at Harvard and Oxford and
was awarded a British Council academic scholarship.

But there is a whiff of the arrogant about Uribe that surfaces from time to
time. In his book about the Colombian drug trade, "Whitewash," British
journalist Simon Strong recounts a 1994 interview with the then senator
that turned sour when the reporter asked a question about one of Uribe's
political proteges who had once enjoyed the backing of the late drug
kingpin Pablo Escobar. According to Strong, the senator stormed out of the
Bogota restaurant where the meeting was taking place. When Strong later
emerged, the journalist encountered a belligerent Uribe waiting for him
outside, surrounded by bodyguards as he waved his fist in front of Strong's
nose and challenged him to resume the interview (in his interview with
NEWSWEEK, Uribe said he has never "intimidated" or "threatened" any
journalist).

The thin-skinned politician apparently hasn't mellowed with time. Uribe
personally phoned the Bogota correspondent, Gonzalo Guillen, of Miami's
Spanish-language newspaper El Nuevo Herald, two weeks ago to complain about
his investigation of Uribe's past ties to the notorious Ochoa clan. The
Ochoas were major players in Escobar's Medellin cartel during its heyday,
and Uribe has acknowledged his father's long friendship with the recently
deceased patriarch Fabio Ochoa, but Uribe maintains he parted ways with
Fabio's sons many years ago. Nevertheless, Uribe didn't appreciate
Guillen's inquiries and made his displeasure known by pointedly asking
whether the journalist lived in Bogota or Miami.

Of far greater concern to some Uribe critics is the candidate's close ties
to the military and how they will shape his four-year term. He kicked off
his quest for the presidency by delivering the keynote speech at a 1999
gala dinner honoring two former Army generals.

But the featured guests weren't exactly run-of-the-mill career soldiers
heading into their golden years.

Both Fernando Millan and Rito Alejo del Rio had been cashiered by Pastrana
for having collaborated with vigilante groups and right-wing paramilitary
units charged with committing massacres and other atrocities in 1996 and
1997. As a result, the State Department rescinded the generals' U.S. visas,
but that didn't stop Uribe from singing their praises in public.

He is particularly chummy with Alejo del Rio, a rotund native of Boyaca
whom Uribe met as governor when the general was commander of the 17th Army
Brigade in northwestern Colombia. The candidate characterizes Alejo del Rio
as an "honorable" man and denies he ever violated anyone's human rights.

Uribe's opponents have also taken aim at his proposal to involve civilians
more directly in antisubversion operations to supplement the country's
embattled security forces.

For some Colombians, the notion evokes memories of the sometimes ruthless
peasant militias created in Peru to neutralize the Shining Path guerrilla
movement in the 1980s and early 1990s. Uribe says he has no plans to arm
the civilian population. But skeptics recall his role in promoting dozens
of neighborhood security organizations called Convivir, some of which
evolved into armed vigilante groups that work closely with right-wing militias.

Uribe's alleged links to the country's 8,000-strong right-wing militias are
harder to document.

The so-called United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia flourished in the
rural areas of Antioquia when Uribe was governor, and according to one
respected Colombian human-rights group, CODHES (the Human Rights and
Displaced Information Bureau), most of the nearly 200,000 people who fled
Antioquia during his term were driven out by paramilitary forces and
Convivir groups. Uribe also allegedly ignored warnings of an imminent
paramilitary massacre in the village of El Aro that left 14 people dead in
1997. He vehemently denies any relationship to paramilitary warlord Carlos
Castano and says his government will treat the country's right-wing
militias just like the communist guerrillas. But the paramilitary forces
have been keeping a relatively low profile since Uribe started to climb in
the polls, and their umbrella group issued a statement hailing the results
of last week's congressional elections that brought victory to dozens of
pro-Uribe candidates.

Will Uribe's tough tactics bring Colombia peace, even at the expense of
democracy?

He has paid lip service to resuming negotiations with the FARC, but only
under conditions that guerrilla leaders have called unacceptable, such as
an unconditional ceasefire.

The fighting will go on, and could escalate if a President Uribe gives the
armed forces carte blanche to do whatever it takes to defeat the rebels.

Given the current mood of the country, that would meet with the approval of
most Colombians. "They've suddenly realized the FARC has pocketed all the
compromises made in the last 40 years," says one U.S. official in Bogota.
Now most Colombians are ready to try a radically different approach-even
if, in the short term, it's guaranteed to bring more blood.