COLOMBIA'S HARD RIGHT

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).