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Opinion polls suggest Uribe, a 53-year-old lawyer elected as an independent in 2002 on promises of smashing this country's decades-old Marxist insurgency, will probably avoid a runoff election by winning more than 50 percent of the May vote.
The main opposition Liberal party is expected to select its candidate in March. The left-wing Democratic Pole party has selected senator and former M19 guerrilla leader Antonio Navarro as its candidate.
Uribe is an ally of the United States and his supporters from Bogota to Wall Street say his policy of "democratic security" has put cocaine smuggling rebels on the defensive and reduced kidnapping and other crime rates, making the Andean country a safer place to live and invest.
"I will work to consolidate democratic security, accomplish the goal of poverty eradication and to exile corruption," Uribe said in a statement broadcast on national television.
Critics say he is giving soft treatment to right-wing paramilitaries which, organized as private militias in the 1980s, are also linked to the country's huge cocaine trade and guilty of some of the worst atrocities of the 41-year war.
Human rights groups say the paramilitaries are not being required to dismantle their criminal networks as part of peace talks with the government.
Eager to show he is willing to talk peace with the rebels as well, Uribe is trying to open negotiations with Colombia's second-biggest guerrilla group known as the ELN aimed at exchanging hostages held by the rebels in secret jungle camps for members of the group in government jails.
Uribe, whose allies in Congress passed a constitutional amendment last year allowing sitting presidents to seek re-election, will be allowed by Colombian law to start his campaign in late January.