COLOMBIANS RALLYING AROUND TOUGH TALK

Uribe Leads As Voters Go To Polls Today

Bogota, Colombia --- Weary of violence, Colombians vote today in a
presidential election in which the front-runner is a tough-talking
candidate vowing no appeasement for one of the world's oldest left-wing
guerrilla movements.

Alvaro Uribe Velez, the leading contender, is a 49-year-old former governor
of Antioquia, a state with a long history of political violence and an
equally bloody cocaine trade, which flourished in the 1980s.

The most reliable pre-election opinion survey, published last Sunday by
Colombia's El Tiempo newspaper, gave Uribe a commanding lead, with 49.3
percent of voters preferring him over seven other candidates.

In the same poll, the second-strongest candidate, veteran politician
Horacio Serpa, trailed far behind with 23 percent.

To avoid a runoff, which would be held June 16, the victor would need to
win more than 50 percent of today's vote.

Whoever wins the four-year presidency inherits a country awash in political
violence by left-wing and right-wing armed groups that kill thousands annually.

The volatile mix is made more complex by Colombia's deep social divisions,
bred from inequality and perennial government corruption, as well as the
country's thriving cocaine industry.

Both the Revolutionary Armed Forces, a 38-year-old guerrilla insurgency
known as the FARC, and the paramilitaries are said to profit from drug
trafficking and kidnapping victims for ransom.

"The priority of Colombia amid all this bloodletting is a government of
authority and firmness to deal with these violent groups," Uribe said last
week during an interview at his campaign headquarters.

On April 14, Uribe narrowly escaped assassination when a bomb was detonated
on a bus near his campaign vehicle while he was in the northern city of
Barranquilla.

Three bystanders were killed, and Uribe decided to campaign using
teleconferences with audiences around the country or under tight security
in Bogota inside closed auditoriums.

Another presidential candidate, Ingrid Betancourt, was kidnapped by the
FARC and is being held along with a number of state legislators and the
current governor of Antioquia state. The FARC would like to exchange them
for guerrilla prisoners held by the government.

Tuesday, left-wing urban guerrillas and security forces exchanged gunfire
in Medellin --- Uribe's hometown --- killing nine people and terrifying
shocked residents.

One of the worst massacres of Colombia's nearly 40-year-old war occurred in
early May when 118 people, including 42 children, were torn apart or burned
to death when the FARC lobbed a bomb into a rural church where the
civilians had taken refuge.

The isolated town, which the army reached days later, was in the middle of
a fierce battle between the FARC and paramilitaries for control of
Colombia's Choco province.

Over the last couple of years, the United States has invested nearly $2
billion in helicopters and military aid and training to assist Colombian
troops in the eradication of cocaine production, of which Colombia is a
world leader.

Congress is now considering a White House-backed bid to add more than $500
million in additional assistance and lift restrictions on using U.S. aid to
combat the FARC and lesser-known guerrilla groups.

In recent weeks the Bush administration has tried to portray Colombia as a
potential breeding ground for non-Colombian terrorist groups.

Three years ago, President Andres Pastrana, who is barred from seeking
another term, tried a bold experiment. He agreed to cede a large portion of
Colombia to the FARC as a demilitarized zone in exchange for peace talks.

But in late February the talks collapsed, and Pastrana, citing the FARC's
continued killings and kidnappings, ordered the army to advance on the zone.

Uribe was originally an underdog who bolted from the Liberal Party and
launched his own maverick campaign after the party selected Serpa as its
presidential candidate. After the peace talks collapsed, Uribe vaulted into
the lead.

Some human rights groups have cautioned that a few of Uribe's ideas ---
especially his proposal to develop a citizens network of informants to help
police and the army --- could generate more vigilantism or make innocent
civilians targets of vengeance.

Uribe also has been dogged by questions about his family's alleged ties to
some of the leaders of Colombia's most notorious cartels, based near Medellin.

They include one formerly run by the late Pablo Escobar and a family of
drug trafficking landowners named the Ochoas.

Uribe has angrily dismissed the suspicions, challenging accusers to come up
with hard evidence of wrongdoing. He said his father simply shared a love
for horseback riding with an Ochoa patriarch.

Serpa and some rights groups also have accused Uribe of tolerating
anti-FARC paramilitary groups although Uribe has vowed to crack down on the
outlawed paramilitaries.

The Organization of American States, which assigned observers to travel
with candidates, has received reports of the FARC and paramilitaries'
intimidating voters, said Santiago Murray, chief of the OAS mission in
Colombia.

"The map of Colombia looks like it has measles," Murray said, displaying a
map divided into a jumble of boxes showing where each side in the conflict
maintains influence. "All the states are taken over."

"Where the [paramilitary] self-defense groups are, they are accused of
promoting Uribe's vote," he said. And where the FARC is, he said,
guerrillas are threatening civilians in hopes of limiting turnout.