By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service

BOGOTA, Colombia, Jan. 30 -- Attacks by Colombia's leftist guerrillas in spite of resumed peace talks have hardened Colombians against a negotiated solution to
the war and set the stage for the most ardent hard-line candidate to win the presidency this year.

As a wave of urban bombings continued with an explosion behind a major television station today, a new poll revealed the extent to which the guerrilla attacks have
pushed Colombians to the right as an important election year begins. For the first time, a national poll shows Alvaro Uribe Velez, the Oxford-educated former
governor of Antioquia province and a sharp critic of the country's peace process, leading the seven-candidate field.

The poll also shows that a majority of Colombians say they believe the military, bolstered in recent months by U.S.-donated helicopters and training, is now capable
of defeating the 18,000-member guerrilla army, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. Only 30 percent of Colombians said they thought a military
victory was possible when polled four years ago, and since then the guerrillas have grown in size and financial strength, thanks in part to profits from protecting a
thriving drug trade.

"This is a national cry of indignation," said Alejandro Santos, editor of the weekly magazine Semana, one of four news organizations that commissioned the poll.
"When you are in a country with order, you clamor for liberty. When you are in a country of violence and anarchy, you clamor for order. The one who is speaking to
this is Uribe."

These public soundings were taken since President Andres Pastrana and guerrilla negotiators earlier this month salvaged a peace process designed to end a conflict
dating to the 1960s. What then appeared to be a moment of hope in Colombia's war, which pits two Marxist guerrilla groups against the Colombian army and a
growing paramilitary force, has dissolved into a bitter, dispiriting military struggle.

Earlier this month, Pastrana threatened to reclaim a 16,000 square-mile guerrilla refuge in southern Colombia that he created three years ago to begin peace
negotiations. He said he would send in the army unless the guerrillas returned to negotiations, which they abandoned in October after Pastrana increased the military
presence around the zone.

The guerrillas agreed to more cease-fire talks. Apparently embarrassed by their concession, however, they immediately began a military campaign that has left dozens
of soldiers, guerrillas and civilians dead. A diplomat involved in the talks said the guerrillas "were still metabolizing" what happened at the table when they began the
assault, which has reinforced Colombians' most cynical view of the peace process as a guerrilla tactic to buy time while improving their strategic position.

In the past week, the guerrillas have exploded a bomb in Bogota that killed four police officers and a 5-year-old girl, killed at least seven members of the elite
rapid-deployment force in an ambush, tumbled electrical towers and set off bombs in several provincial capitals. The Colombian military has struck back, killing more
than a dozen guerrillas, but the attacks continue.

The violence has borne out the predictions of many observers who say they believe the guerrillas will play the lead role in deciding this year's presidential elections. In
an interview, Carlos Castano, head of a private paramilitary army of 10,000 to 15,000 that also fights the guerrillas, said, "It is clear the guerrillas will continue
determining who will be the president and who won't be."

Uribe, 50, has been the chief political beneficiary of the guerrilla campaign. In four months, his polling numbers have jumped 16 percentage points and he now leads
Liberal Party stalwart Horacio Serpa, the major candidate most closely associated with the current peace process, by 9 points. Serpa, a charismatic populist who
narrowly lost the 1998 presidential race, dropped 11 points since the same poll was taken in September.

Uribe now has 39 percent of the vote, according to the poll. If those results hold until the first round of balloting in May, Uribe and Serpa would face each other in a
June runoff. Pastrana is prohibited by law from running again.

                                               © 2002