Colombian President-elect Andrés Pastrana Arango

By ANDRÉS PASTRANA ARANGO; CATHLEEN FARRELL /BOGOTA

n June 21, Conservative Party candidate Andrés Pastrana Arango won a run-off in Colombia's presidential elections. Pastrana will take over a country in crisis. The outgoing government of Ernesto Samper Pizano was virtually paralyzed by charges that Samper took Cali-drug-cartel money for his campaign. Marxist guerrillas have asserted control over vast areas. TIME talked with Pastrana about his agenda. Excerpts:

TIME: What will be your first priority as President?

Pastrana: The first mandate and the first responsibility of the new government is working to attain peace. I have promised that I will personally sit down with the guerrillas and that I will lead peace talks. [Colombia's two main guerrilla groups, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and the National Liberation Army, have waged war for nearly four decades.] Colombia hasn't held peace talks in six years. The guerrillas have put forth some discussion points, and we will too. But first of all we have to get everyone to agree to sit at the negotiating table.

TIME: Have you had contact with the guerrillas since your election?

Pastrana: We're working on that.

TIME: Directly? What are the logistics involved?

Pastrana: First, I have asked President Ernesto Samper for guarantees for our safety and for that of the guerrillas, and he has agreed. We are working out a location. [Nobel laureate] Gabriel Garcia Marquez has been instrumental in making contacts with the guerrillas for us.

TIME: Will you try to meet with them before your Aug. 7 inauguration?

Pastrana: Definitely, yes.

TIME: Are paramilitary groups going to be at the same table?

Pastrana: No, absolutely not. I think those are two different actors.

TIME: Why?

Pastrana: The guerrillas are a political movement with a set of beliefs, and they have proposed alternative political, economic and social models. The paramilitaries are the result of the lack of official military presence, which should be provided by the state. I have said very clearly that the paramilitaries must first submit themselves to the laws of Colombia, and then we'll see how we can work with them.

TIME: What sort of contact have you had with the paramilitary groups?

Pastrana: I received a letter from them some weeks ago. They expressed a willingness to work for peace.

TIME: What time frame are we talking about? Weeks? Months?

Pastrana: We don't want to generate a lot of unrealistic expectations. It's going to be a very long process, and very difficult. We hope that by the end of the government [four years] we'll achieve peace.

TIME: Once you get everyone to the table, what is your government going to put forth as possible solutions to the conflict?

Pastrana: A great part of the conflict comes from the lack of state presence in many regions of Colombia. We have to tie the peace process to the budget, meaning we need to invest in those regions in infrastructure, health, education, low-cost housing. That will increase the state's presence. We achieve nothing if we get everyone to the table but don't have concrete plans.

TIME: What points are you willing to cede on? One guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army, says it wants to control the budgets and monies received from the central government by the municipalities of the regions where it has control.

Pastrana: No, no way. Legally that's impossible. We are willing to consider anything that may be acceptable within the constitution.

TIME: Where do Colombia's legitimate security forces, namely the army, fit into the peace process?

Pastrana: We have to recover the management of public order with the army. I think that's fundamental. We need to put more effort into more effective military intelligence, and it's not a question of throwing more money at the problem. It's a problem of strategy, pure and simple. I think as mayor of Bogota [Pastrana was Bogota's first popularly elected mayor from June 1988 to 1990] I earned a Ph.D. in public order. I buried three presidential candidates while in office, and during the past nine months as mayor there were 130 acts of narcoterrorism. I think I coined that phrase. Public order is crucial, and that is clearly the role of the military.

TIME: Will you invite other countries, specifically the U.S., to participate in the peace process?

Pastrana: We will invite the European Union and the U.S., the world, to get involved if they so want. That may mean the construction of roads, airports, agro-industrial projects, job creation.

TIME: You're not gong to encourage the U.S. to get any more involved than that?

Pastrana: Yes, yes. Really what we want is to create something like what in El Salvador was called "Friends of El Salvador." The guerrillas have expressed a willingness to eradicate [illicit] crops such as poppies and coca as they go into the peace process. That's a very good start. Maybe we could involve other countries in that process as well.

TIME: Relations between the U.S. and Colombia under President Samper were strained to the limit because of accusations that his election campaign had received money from drug cartels. Does your election signal a new direction in bilateral relations with the U.S.?

Pastrana: First, this election has definitely changed things. The State Department said it wants to turn the page, that this is a new era for Colombia. I think the legitimacy and the credibility we have from the mandate Colombians have given us will allow us the opportunity to regain our status within the international community. With respect to bilateral relations, we have to open the agenda. For us the agenda isn't only narcotics, as it has been for the past four years. We're going to be very tough on narcotics, but there are other issues. The U.S. is our most important trading partner.

TIME: You want to get narcotics off the agenda?

Pastrana: It's going to be on the agenda, but it's not going to be the only issue. It has dominated the agenda for far too long, and we don't want that anymore. Nobody does.

TIME: You have said you may say no to the U.S. on a lot of issues.

Pastrana: You need authority to stand up and say no, and that's what we have right now. My idea is to have really, really good relations with the U.S. We should turn back the clock to 1994, when we had our best relations. We need to regain that confidence.