A Conversation With Álvaro Uribe

A. There are people who are upset, but my duty as president is to solve the impasse. We need to continue working with President Bush and the members of Congress and have Speaker Pelosi visit Colombia. Since the beginning of my administration, we have fought to overcome violence, to protect trade union leaders and to strengthen the administration of justice. There's a long way left, we recognize.

Q. How much of Colombia now is under the control of your government?

A. At this moment, we have weakened all the terrorist organizations in Colombia -- paramilitaries, guerrillas -- we have restored law and order in the vast majority of our territory. They no longer have portions of our territory under their control, but they still have the power to harm citizens.

Q. But I understand that today you can walk down the streets of Bogota safely, whereas five years ago it was far too dangerous.

A. We have seen the reduction of homicides from 35,000 per year to less than 17 last year, and kidnappings [have dropped] from 3,000 per year to 270 last year. Remember that before the beginning of my term, the FARC destroyed almost 200 municipalities. In the last months, they have been unable to destroy municipalities. Now we have increased the effectiveness [of our law enforcement] to protect the union leaders. We have almost doubled the budget for the justice administration.

Q. Why are the union leaders in the United States so adamant about the poor treatment of union leaders in Colombia? They claim that four union leaders were killed recently in Colombia and allege that it was the fault of your administration.

A. When my government began, Colombia suffered the assassination of more than 250 trade union leaders per year. . . . Last year, [it was] 26. This year, if we consider trade unions plus teachers, we have seen 19 assassinations. We have seen a reduction, but we are not happy because we need zero cases. At this moment, Colombia has a program under which we protect 9,000 Colombians -- [of these] 1,900 are trade union leaders. They are beneficiaries of this individual protection. This program is very expensive.

In the last two weeks, we have arrested the murderers in two cases. In one recent case, when a teacher who was seven months pregnant was stabbed to death, the murderer is now in jail. Two weeks ago, [in the case of] one other teacher who was killed, the students who killed him are in jail. We have more than 130 murderers in jail because of the determination of our government.