Venezuela sends troops to Colombia border

The Associated Press
Tuesday, March 4, 2008

BOGOTÁ: Hundreds of Venezuelan troops moved toward the border with Colombia on Tuesday, where trade was slowing amid heightening tension after Colombia's cross-border strike on a rebel base in Ecuador.

The Organization of American States scheduled an emergency afternoon meeting in Washington to try to calm one of the region's worst political showdowns in years, between Colombia and Venezuela's president, Hugo Chávez, and his allies.

Colombian and Ecuadorean officials, meanwhile, traded accusations in the United Nations and the International Criminal Court.

The escalation of tensions was set off over the weekend when Colombia troops crossed the border with Ecuador and killed Raúl Reyes, a top commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, whose rebels had set up a camp there.

Chávez, who sympathizes with the leftist rebels, condemned the killing and angrily ordered about 9,000 soldiers - 10 battalions - to Venezuela's border with Colombia. He warned President Álvaro Uribe of Colombia that any strike on Venezuelan soil could provoke a South American war.

Colombia's defense minister said Monday that he would not be provoked into mobilizing troops in response.

President George W. Bush said the United States would stand by Colombia and criticized Venezuela's government for making "provocative maneuvers." Colombia has received about $5 billion in U.S. aid to fight drugs and leftist rebels since 2000.

Alberto Muller Rojas, a retired Venezuelan general and former top Chávez aide, said the troops were being sent to the border region as "a preventative measure."

Soldiers boarded buses and trucks at the Paramaracay base in central Venezuela on Tuesday morning, and battalions also were moving out from the northern state of Lara, its pro-Chávez governor, Luis Reyes, said.

The Venezuelan military has been tight-lipped about troop movements. Venezuela's armed forces include about 100,000 troops, Muller Rojas said. Colombia's U.S.-equipped and trained military has more than twice as many.

Uribe said his government would ask the International Criminal Court to try Chávez, alleging that he had financed "genocide" committed by the FARC. Uribe alleged that a laptop computer the Colombians said belonged to Raúl Reyes contained a reference to a $300 million Venezuelan payment.

The biggest losers from the killing of Reyes appeared to be the hostages that the FARC rebels have held for years, pending a swap with rebel prisoners.

Ecuador and France said they had been communicating with Reyes, trying to secure a hostage release, when Colombia's air force crossed the border to bomb his jungle camp. Along with Reyes, 20 other rebels were killed.

"I'm sorry to tell you that the conversations were pretty advanced to free 12 hostages," Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa, said in a nationally televised address. "All of this was frustrated by the war-mongering, authoritarian hands" of the Colombian government.

A French Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Pascale Andréani, confirmed that France had been in contact with Reyes and that "the Colombians were aware of it."

Colombia said documents in Reyes's laptop indicate that Correa's internal security minister met recently with a FARC envoy to discuss deepening relations with Ecuador and even replacing military officers who might oppose that.

Publicly, there had been no indication of even preliminary progress in securing the release of any of the 40 hostages the FARC wants to swap for hundreds of jailed guerrillas. Those hostages include three U.S. military contractors and a former Colombian presidential candidate, Ingrid Betancourt, who also has French nationality and who has become a cause célèbre in Europe.

The raid Saturday followed last week's release by the FARC of four hostages to Venezuela's justice minister, Ramón Rodríguez Chacín. The minister said the raid proved the "intent of the fascist Colombian government is to hamper the handover of hostages, because that is the path of peace."

Another victim of the crisis may be border trade, valued at $5 billion a year, most of it Colombian exports sorely needed by Venezuelans who are already suffering milk and meat shortages. Ecuador also depends on about $1.8 billion in trade with Colombia.

Venezuela said it would stop new exports and imports. At one closed border crossing, in Paraguachon, Venezuela, the authorities stopped trucks lined up Tuesday morning. But traffic was flowing normally at another crossing, in El Amparo, where a handful of Venezuelan troops stood watch as usual, the customs office was open, and traffic passed freely.