ELECTIONEERING BEGINS IN BELEAGUERED COLOMBIA

BOGOTA - Colombia's presidential race kicked off in earnest yesterday after
a live television debate among five candidates, most of whom pledged to get
tough on rebels and even extradite the movement's leaders to the United States.

More than ever, Colombia's race for the presidency reflects growing anger
at the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, after President
Andres Pastrana's peace process with the group collapsed on Feb. 20 and the
guerrillas began attacking the country's infrastructure. Pastrana is barred
from running for a second term in the May 26 election.

In the debate, which began Tuesday night and lasted until after midnight,
four candidates said they would agree to the extradition of FARC founder
and leader Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda if the United States sought it. The
rebel group has killed 13 Americans since 1980 and kidnapped more than 100
others, US Attorney General John Ashcroft said this week.

Only a leftist candidate, Luis Eduardo Garzon, said he would oppose
extradition.

No one discussed the difficulties of capturing the wily 71-year-old
Marulanda, whose group has been fighting elected governments in Colombia
for 38 years.

US officials have not announced any indictment against Marulanda, but
Ashcroft said Monday that three FARC rebels have been indicted in the
United States on drug trafficking charges. The FARC, and a rival right-wing
paramilitary group, are financed by "taxing" production of cocaine in
Colombia, the world's foremost producer of the drug.

Retired Army General Harold Bedoya, who's lagging in the polls and running
as an independent, was Marulanda's sharpest critic.

"Sureshot is not a guerrilla, but a drug trafficker," declared Bedoya, a
former armed forces chief. He said the FARC was nothing but "a drug cartel."

Candidates at the debate also included the front-runner, Alvaro Uribe, a
former interior minister, Horacio Serpa of the Liberal Party, and a former
foreign minister, Noemi Sanin, an independent. Absent was Ingrid
Betancourt, who was kidnapped by the FARC on Feb. 23 in a Colombian war zone.

Uribe, who has 60 percent support in the latest polls, called for more
military assistance by the United States. He also wants Washington to help
Colombia track planes that smuggle drugs and import weapons.

That assistance was suspended after a Peruvian jet, guided by a CIA-
operated surveillance plane, shot down a civilian plane over Peru last
year, mistaking it for a possible drug-smuggling flight. An American
missionary and her daughter were killed.