Popularity of Colombia's Uribe hits record high
BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombian President Alvaro Uribe's popularity rose to a record high 82 percent thanks to his handling of a recent diplomatic spat with Ecuador and Venezuela, according to a Gallup poll published on Thursday.
The survey fueled speculation that the conservative leader would run again in 2010 if his supporters can get a constitutional amendment passed allowing a third consecutive term.
Ecuador and Venezuela broke diplomatic ties with Uribe's government and sent troops to their Colombian borders after he ordered a military strike into Ecuadorean territory on March 1 to kill a top left-wing rebel leader.
The poll of 1,000 Colombians was taken last week at the high point of the crisis as regional leaders criticized Colombia for violating Ecuador's sovereignty.
But Uribe won points at home first by ordering the strike that killed FARC guerrilla leader Raul Reyes and then with his handling of the diplomatic dispute, which was settled at a summit in the Dominican Republic on Friday.
He accused the leftist leaders of Ecuador and Venezuela of not helping in the fight against drug-running guerrillas. But he promised no more incursions into neighboring territory if they guaranteed that rebels would not be allowed shelter there.
The poll, taken by Gallup Colombia Ltd. in Colombia's four biggest cities -- Bogota, Medellin, Cali and Barranquilla -- had a margin of error of about 3 percentage points.
The last survey by the same company in January gave the president a popularity rating of 80 percent.
Uribe won re-election in 2006 after cutting urban crime and spurring investment with his U.S.-backed crackdown on the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
His supporters are gathering signatures in support of a measure to change Colombian law to allow him to run again.
But Uribe, whose father was killed in a botched FARC kidnapping in the 1980s, has not given clear signals about a possible third campaign. And he has not groomed a successor.
"If he wants to run again he'll win. It's in his hands," said Francisco Leal, political analyst at Bogota's University of the Andes. "But he will probably not make a decision on that until next year."
(Reporting by Hugh Bronstein; Editing by Eric Beech)
