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Suspected leftist FARC guerrillas fired mortar shells killing 13 people in a Bogota slum on Wednesday just blocks from Congress where right-winger Alvaro Uribe was being sworn in as Colombian President pledging to get tough on the rebels.
Police said the dead were believed to be vagrants, including three children. The attack occurred as the inauguration ceremony took place amid massive security, including a US surveillance plane and 20,000 police and troops on the streets of Bogota.
Three mortar shells or grenades also smashed into the adjacent presidential palace, wounding three people and causing superficial damage to the building Uribe will occupy for the next four years.
Uribe won a landslide election victory in May promising to curb the bloodshed in an escalating 38-year-old war, boosting security with a big increase in military spending.
There were groans and mayhem on nearby slum streets as Uribe, still unaware of events, listened to a youth orchestra in the colonial splendor of Congress after being dressed in the red, yellow and blue presidential sash and promising a firm hand with insurgent forces.
A camouflage-clad policeman, his head bleeding, staggered from the presidential complex, a rifle hanging by his side.
A few blocks away, the dead lay mangled in a garbage-strewn street inhabited by homeless people and drug addicts. Police said 28 other people were injured.
Uribe, a clean-cut, 50-year-old lawyer, said he wanted the United Nations to mediate with the rebels but that new peace talks would only start if they laid down their arms.
"We are offering democracy, so that arms can be replaced by argument," said Uribe in his inauguration speech.
He later turned pale when officials took him aside after the ceremony and told him what had happened.
Foreign dignitaries, including US drug czar John Walters, the presidents of Venezuela and Argentina and Spanish heir-to-the-throne Price Felipe, sat unaware of the violence just a short walk away.
In the days leading up to Uribe's inauguration, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC, has launched attacks in the lawless countryside, including mortar-shelling an airport in the eastern Arauca Province. At least 36 were killed in clashes with the army on Tuesday.
Uribe, a former provincial governor, says he will raise military spending, fight corruption and boost social programs to reduce the poverty feeding a conflict that claims the lives of thousands of people every year.
The FARC, a 17,000-strong peasant army that says it is fighting for socialist demands, has thrown down a gauntlet to Uribe's promises of law and order by warning all the country's mayors to resign or face being killed.
Dozens of mayors in violence-hit regions have quit, leaving entire towns at the mercy of illegal gunmen.
Uribe Close to Washington
Uribe's critics, including many human rights organizations, worry about his plans to form a million-strong network of civilian informers, and recall the growth of right-wing death squads during the time he was governor of Antioquia.
His hard-line rhetoric resonates in Washington and he is a key proponent of US aid. The United States has provided more than $1.5 billion in mostly military assistance in the past four years to fight drug trafficking, but Uribe wants Washington to become more involved in the war against rebels.
A stern disciplinarian whose political mantra is "work, work, work," the no-nonsense Uribe has generated enormous expectations among war-weary Colombians. Many hope Uribe will bury the memory of the departing administration of President Andres Pastrana, whose efforts to bring peace through negotiations with the rebels collapsed in February.
Although the FARC killed his landowner father in the 1980s, Uribe says he has no personal vendetta against Latin America's oldest and biggest insurgent army.
At a time when Latin America's economies are being buffeted, Uribe is counting on Washington to use its influence with multilateral lending agencies to get him the cash he needs for his ambitious defense and social programs.
Small Man, Big Challenges
Uribe faces formidable challenges in his four-year term.
With powerful armed groups controlling vast areas of the country, unemployment hovering at 16 percent, booming drug and kidnapping industries and a sluggish economy, Colombia has rarely seemed in a worse shape.
Some analysts warn that Uribe, a longtime Liberal Party member who ran as an independent, runs the risk of wasting the opportunity provided by his high early popularity on a dangerous fight with Congress.
Lawmakers are promising a showdown if the new president goes ahead with plans for a referendum asking Colombians whether Congress should be dissolved and replaced by a one-chamber legislature to save money.
(China Daily August 8, 2002)
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