Bogota media stoke fire forecasting "stormy and red hot" summit between Chavez Frias and Uribe

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Monday, April 21, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

Pressure is building up before the Colombian-Venezuelan presidential summit scheduled on Wednesday April 23 in Puerto Ordaz.

Colombian Attorney General, Luis Camilo Osorio claims that Venezuela is harboring Colombian criminals in Venezuelan territory and calls on Venezuelan authorities to exercise greater collaboration in confronting the critical border situation. "The warning is clear: anyone who is a friend of criminals must accept the consequences." 

Osorio is referring principally , of course to Colombian guerrillas, who have been fighting successive governments for more than thirty years but throws in paramilitaries, narco-traffickers and common criminals for good measure. "I don't want to enter into microphone policy but in as far as it concerns my Office, we demand greater collaboration from the Venezuelan authorities and we are investigating the alleged bombing of a Colombian village by Venezuelan planes."

• The Colombian media has forecast that the summit will be "stormy and red hot." 

The first meeting between President Hugo Chavez Frias and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe took place on November 13, 2002 in Santa Marta, Colombia when both sides agreed to follow normal diplomatic channels to address problems and avoid so-called microphone policy of publicly attacking each other via media spots. 

This summit is preceded by a return to the shouting match or microphone diplomacy initiated on the Colombian side and which has characterized bilateral relations over the last couple of years. 

It coincides with a Colombian media offensive emboldened by the US war on Iraq and certainty that the USA will finally solve Colombian's internal de facto civil war, which has been mostly rural and recently started to hit urban areas. 

Venezuelan Executive Vice president, Jose Vicente Rangel has replied to the offensive by counter-attacking taking the Colombians by surprise, and raising belligerency levels in bilateral relations. 

Colombia's El Espectador broadsheet forecasts that it will be difficult to reach concrete agreements given current relations. Economic relations will figure high on the agenda as Venezuelans allegedly owe Colombian exporters $250-350 million.

Chavez Frias could dangle economic advantages to his counterpart by offering to drop the disastrous trucking agreement that has caused serious damage to trade between the two countries. 

The irony is that three years ago Chavez Frias ordered Colombian trucks that formerly delivered cargo inside Venezuela to transfer products to Venezuelan trucks at border check-points to favor Venezuelan trucking barons unable to compete on equals terms with their Colombian counterparts ... the main baron being (former?)  Federation of Chambers of Industry & Commerce president, Carlos Fernandez whose greed almost broke the Venezuelan economy in December-January. 

The deciding factor in Uribe's approach to the summit will be the USA and possible "pre-emptive diplomacy" changes to Plan Colombia. 

Colombian Senate Foreign Affairs Committee president, Enrique Gomez Hurtado agrees that it will be difficult to normalize bilateral relations ... "the Venezuelan government has few elements of mental normality ... President Chavez Frias has lost all credibility and is stimulating international provocations to cover up Venezuela's economic crisis."

The latest Bogota media spin is to reveal a Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) deserter's claim that the Caracas Carapaima urban guerrilla group is a FARC front and  evidence of the link between President Chavez Frias and FARC.

The woman deserter, who has entered the Colombian Army's witness protection program, has stated that the subversives receive Venezuelan ID cards and that FARC commander Jorge Briceno received medical attention in the Venezuelan border town of San Antonio in May 2000.

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