AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Thursday, 6 August 1998


                Colombia's new president to take office
                     amid violence, economic woes
                ---------------------------------------


BOGOTA -- Colombia's new president puts on the sash of office Friday amid
high hopes and the largest guerrilla offensive the South American nation
has seen in years.

Conservative Andres Pastrana, a 44-year-old lawyer, journalist and son of
a former president, was elected in June. He takes over from discredited
President Ernesto Samper, who was constitutionally barred from seeking
reelection.

Over the past few days, some 250 soldiers, rebels and civilians have died
as leftists insurgents launched a huge offensive seen as a show of force
in advance of the presidential inauguration.

And as car bombs explode, machine guns rattle and warplanes bomb rebel
positions, the economy is in its worst state in a decade.

Unemployment, inflation and interest rates have shot through the roof, and
the government deficit is at five billion dollars.

Many blame Samper --whose Liberal party has governed for 12 years-- for
creating chaos at home and trouble and embarrassment abroad.

Another major challenge for Pastrana will be to rebuild relations with the
United States, severely damaged by Samper's admissions that his 1994
presidential campaign took money from Colombian drug lords.

And Washington seems open to closer ties.

"We're sending an important high-level delegation down there as witness to
our desire for a really close, productive cooperative relationship," US
State Department spokesman James Foley said in Washington.

Drug czar Barry McCaffrey and former special adviser to President Bill
Clinton for Latin America, Thomas McLarty, will lead the US delegation.

"We believe it's turning a new page for Colombia and certainly a new page
towards better relations between the United States and Colombia," he said.

US-Colombia relations are bound to improve under the new president, says
Lowell Fleischer of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in
Washington.

"Relations were so bad during the whole Samper administration, they can't
help but improve," Fleischer said. "The fact that Pastrana came to the US
and met with Clinton, prior to his inauguration, shows that the Colombians
are prepared to do what's necessary to improve relations."

"The stumbling block remains the whole narcotics issue," he said.

In many areas, especially in the southeast where this week's fighting has
taken place, guerrillas have made common cause with drug traffickers,
accepting cash in return for guarding their shipments, observers say.

Pastrana has made peace with the country's two main guerrilla groups a top
campaign issue. And he didn't wait to take office before trying to deliver.

On July 9 he met with the leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia (FARC), Manuel Marulanda, to lay the groundwork for peace talks.
But despite that meeting the FARC decided to launch its offensive on
Monday, showing it could still mount a serious challenge to the Colombian
army.

The smaller National Liberation Army, which signed a July 15 accord with
civilian organizations to reduce the level of violence, launched its own
attacks.

The three-decade-old civil conflict has picked up over the past two years,
leaving some 6,000 people dead in 1997. About one million people have been
displaced by the violence pitting the rebels against the military and
right-wing death squads.

Pastrana has condemned the offensive. "As president I would have preferred
other gestures" from the rebels, he said.

"We are in a war and peace is not easy, but we hope there would be a real
will from the guerrillas to make peace," he added.

The president-elect has also called on rightist paramilitaries not to
respond to the guerrilla offensive with violence of their own.

But Fleischer believes the guerrillas don't necessarily think that peace
is in their interests.

"It's hard to see what's in it for the guerrilla groups," which control
whole areas of the country and make money from the drug trade, he said.

        Copyright 1998 Agence France-Presse