COLOMBIA VOTES FOR HARD-LINER

President-Elect Plans To Back Military In Clearing Rebel Threats

BOGOTA, Colombia - Hard-line independent candidate Alvaro Uribe swept to
victory by a huge margin in Colombian presidential elections Sunday,
capturing millions of votes with his pledge to boost military spending and
crack down on guerrilla lawlessness.

With almost all 11.5 million ballots counted nationwide, Mr. Uribe claimed
victory with 53 percent of the vote. He bested his closest competitor,
former Sen. Horacio Serpa, by 2.3 million votes - a 20 percentage-point margin.

The 49-year-old former governor from northern Antioquia province became the
first candidate in nearly 30 years to win a presidential election by a
simple majority, avoiding the runoff race required by law if no single
candidate garners at least 50 percent of the vote.

AP Alvaro Uribe Having spent most of his campaign calling for an
iron-fisted response to Colombia's insurgent groups and a doubling of
military forces to confront them, the president-elect emerged late Sunday
with a message of moderation, calling on the international community to
help mediate a new round of peace talks.

"Colombia needs an intense liberation, but a brotherly liberation," he
said, acknowledging the deep poverty and economic inequality at the heart
of the leftist rebel struggle to topple the government. At the same time,
however, he demanded that the rebels put down their arms and stop
kidnapping civilians before he would agree to new peace talks. The rebels
already have rejected those demands.

The election comes at an important turning point for a nation immersed in
an escalating 38-year-old civil conflict, fueled increasingly by income
from drug trafficking. Washington, which already has invested $1.5 billion
to combat Colombia's drug trade, is looking at relaxing restrictions to
allow its package of mostly military aid to be used directly against
guerrillas and paramilitaries, regardless of whether they are involved in
trafficking.

U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson, emerging from a congratulatory visit with
the president-elect, said the results indicate that "Colombians are fed up
with terrorism." She called the lopsided tally "a fairly significant
mandate" for Mr. Uribe's ambitious plans to fix his war-battered country.

Pastrana backlash

Voters expressed widespread exasperation with a three-year peace process
launched by President Andres Pastrana that enabled the nation's largest
guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, to
roam freely in a Switzerland-size safe haven south of the capital. Only
three months ago, Mr. Pastrana abruptly canceled the peace process and took
back the safe haven after the FARC hijacked a passenger plane, kidnapped
legislators, exploded car bombs and unleashed a campaign of mayhem across
the country. One of the 11 candidates in Sunday's race, former Sen. Ingrid
Betancourt, was kidnapped and has spent the last three months of the
campaign as a FARC hostage.

In his acceptance speech, Mr. Uribe paid tribute to Ms. Betancourt and
other kidnapped politicians, along with the thousands of other Colombian
civilians who remain in guerrilla captivity.

He also noted the death of his father in 1983 during a failed kidnapping
attempt by the rebels. Mr. Uribe was the target of a FARC bomb attack last
April that destroyed the armored car he was traveling in while campaigning.

He said he would work to reverse Colombia's international image "as one of
the most violent nations in the world."

The spectacle of the bombing and Ms. Betancourt's kidnapping, among other
attacks, contributed heavily to the electorate's sense of outrage and
demand for radical change, political analysts said. Mr. Pastrana's
Conservative Party showed so poorly in pre-election polls that its
candidate dropped out of the race in March.

Mr. Uribe's victory marks the first by an independent candidate in six
decades, breaking a long tradition of power-sharing between the
long-dominant Conservative and Liberal parties. A longtime Liberal member,
Mr. Uribe broke with the party last year when it became clear that he would
not win its nomination.

Mr. Serpa, the Liberal Party's candidate, had consistently trailed Mr.
Uribe in the closing months of the campaign as guerrilla violence spread
throughout the country.

Mr. Serpa emerged Sunday night to congratulate the president-elect but
lashed out at Mr. Pastrana, who defeated him in a presidential runoff
election four years ago. Mr. Serpa called Mr. Pastrana's election "a disaster."

Those sentiments were echoed by voters as they emerged from casting their
ballots earlier Sunday.

"I want us to have a different country led by a person with new ideas. What
have we achieved after 38 years of trying to reason with the guerrillas?"
said Patricia Lozano, 43, after casting her vote for Mr. Uribe in a
working-class neighborhood of northern Bogota. "The only language they
understand is that of the iron fist."

Voters swarmed to polling centers amid some of the tightest security
measures ever imposed in a Colombian election. More than 200,000 troops and
police were deployed on high alert across the country. In major cities,
voters waited in lines for three to four hours to cast their ballots.

Thousands reportedly were turned away from the nation's largest voting
center, in Bogota, when polls closed precisely at 4 p.m. local time with
lines still extending for several city blocks.

Turnout was described by electoral officials as heavy, despite threats by
the FARC to attack polling places.

Dealing with FARC

The armed forces commander, Gen. Fernando Tapias, said the guerrillas
unleashed a series of bomb attacks in five rural municipalities that halted
voting in 24 of 60,000 voting centers nationwide. At least three rebels
were killed and two soldiers injured in separate attacks. Before the vote,
about 1,200 rural polls had to be moved to urban areas because of threats
by guerrillas and paramilitary forces. "Colombia is accustomed to bringing
about elections under extreme conditions but never at this magnitude," said
Santiago Murray, an Argentine who is chief of the Organization of American
States observer mission for Sunday's vote. "The level of intimidation and
threats has been much heavier than ever before."

Voters welcomed the heavy security, although they uniformly condemned the
insurgent groups that have made such measures necessary.

"It seems like we play the same pingpong game every four years. I just want
the violence to end," said Amalia Lopez, 61, a Bogota lawyer. "We've wasted
another four years waiting for a peace process that turned out to be a
joke, nothing more than a magic act."

Ms. Lopez refused to say which candidate she voted for, but she predicted
that a victory by Mr. Uribe would provoke a harsh response from the FARC.
"They will take drastic measures," she said. "This situation is going to
get a lot worse before it gets better."