Uribe's Re-Election Also a Win for U.S.

Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe greet supporters in Medellin Monday, May 29, 2006. Uribe was re-elected in a landslide in Colombia's most peaceful elections in more than a decade. (AP Photo/Luis Benavides) (Luis Benavides - AP)

BOGOTA, Colombia -- President Alvaro Uribe's landslide re-election victory wasn't only celebrated in Colombia. The clear win for the law-and-order conservative was a triumph as well for U.S. policymakers, who some observers say may be losing Latin America to a rising tide of leftist nationalism.

In recent years, a wave of left-leaning governments has swept across South America _ from Chile's relatively friendly socialist Michelle Bachelet to the Washington-bashing Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Meanwhile, nationalization of foreign-owned companies is on the rise, most recently in Bolivia, while free market reforms have fallen to the wayside.

With its influence waning, Washington sees Uribe _ who won Sunday by 40 percentage points over his closest rival _ as a regional model for the virtues of free trade and friendship with the United States.

Under Uribe, "the Colombian people have produced the single greatest success story in Latin America," U.S. Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns wrote in an April opinion piece in The Miami Herald. "Colombia has a profound impact on the peace and stability of the region."

Burns credited Uribe's success in part to his cooperation with the U.S. anti-drug Plan Colombia, which has pumped more than $4 billion into the country since 2000, helping reduce the ferocity of a 40-year-old leftist insurgency.

But it won't be easy to convert Uribe's popularity at home into influence among Colombia's neighbors.

Uribe's law-and-order agenda has served him well in Colombia, where years of civil war have left a desire for basic security that trumps all other concerns. But he has less appeal in the rest of Latin America, where guerrilla insurgencies ceased decades ago.

"Among its neighbors, Colombia is seen as an unconditional ally of the United States, not an honest broker," said Adam Isacson, a senior policy associate at the Washington-based Center for International Policy.

Washington's best hope is that Uribe will be able to lead by example, relying on continued U.S. backing to build on the achievements of his first term.

"He's a safe port in a stormy region," said Christopher Sabatini, senior policy director at the Council of the Americas in New York. "It's only natural the United States would seek to project him as a regional leader."

With fewer kidnappings and reduced violence, confidence has returned to Colombians, spurring a wave of foreign investment and tourism that helped the economy grow a combined 9 percent the last two years. Uribe has also aggressively promoted the free-trade agreement he reached in February with the United States.

But he has refused to play the role of America's pit bull in the region.

He frequently exchanges bear hugs with Chavez, whom Washington considers a destabilizing threat to democracy. The two also plan to jointly build a pipeline through Colombia to export Venezuelan oil to China.

On the eve of elections, Chavez praised the Colombian leader as a man "deserving of respect" even while lashing out against Peru's conservative President Alejandro Toledo as an "imperial subject" of the United States.

Uribe has stayed out of the spat over Chavez's decision to pull Venezuela from the five-nation Andean Community trade bloc, largely in response to Colombia's free trade deal with Washington.

Uribe also enjoys cordial relations with Fidel Castro's Cuba, which has hosted talks between Colombia's government and its second-largest rebel group, the National Liberation Army.

During the campaign, Uribe pledged that Cuba would be the first country he'd visit during his second term. He's also brokering a trade deal with Castro _ implicitly defying U.S. efforts to isolate the communist-governed island.