Colombia, Venezuela to discuss relations

Story last updated at 7:11 a.m. Wednesday, April 23, 2003
Charleston.net-Chicago Tribune

HAVANA--Hoping to defuse a potentially dangerous confrontation, the leaders of Colombia and Venezuela are scheduled to meet today after weeks of bickering and the allegation that the Venezuelan air force bombed a Colombian border town last month.

The incident, which is being investigated by both governments, is only the latest in a series of actions that has angered officials from the two nations and threatens to widen Colombia's internal conflict.

Colombian officials accuse Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez of not doing enough to prevent Colombian rebels from carrying out hit-and-run attacks using bases inside Venezuela.

They also are angered by the recent bombing of the Colombian consulate in Venezuela and the sharp drop in bilateral trade during Venezuela's prolonged political crisis, a further blow to Colombia's fragile economy.

"It's a very difficult situation," said one top Colombian official. "We've tried to work things out. There has been lots of talk (from the Venezuelans) but no action."

Chavez and other officials deny that the air force attacked targets in Colombia or that Venezuela is supporting Colombia's largest rebel group, the 18,000-member Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

While Chavez has expressed hopes that his meeting with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe will ease tensions, Venezuelan Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel has criticized Colombian officials for suggesting that his country is providing a haven to the rebels.

"If Colombian delinquents have come into this country, then this is more the result of negligence and complicity by the Colombian authorities, rather than by us Venezuelans," Rangel said.

Experts say the outcome of the presidential summit in the southeast Venezuelan city of Puerto Ordaz could have repercussions for the United States. Venezuela and to a lesser extent Colombia are major oil suppliers.

The United States also has poured more than $2 billion into an extensive antinarcotics and counterinsurgency program in Colombia, a close American ally and one of a handful of Latin American countries that supported the war in Iraq.

A broader conflict between Venezuela and Colombia could destabilize the region, experts say.

"The situation is very dangerous," said Michael Shifter, a senior fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, D.C. "There is an enormous amount at stake."

Relations between the two nations have been up and down almost since Venezuela broke away from its neighbor more than a century ago. But the tension increased after Chavez was elected president in 1998 and began his self-styled populist revolution.

Some Colombian officials say the Chavez government has failed to act firmly against the FARC, a powerful rebel force that moves frequently across the sparsely populated 1,270-mile frontier of mountain, savanna and jungle.

When peace talks between the FARC and the Colombian government collapsed last year, Colombia's military began battling the rebels for control of the border region along with a third group, the powerful right-wing paramilitary force known as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, AUC.

Experts say that FARC has used the Venezuelan side of the frontier as a rear base and for arms trafficking and other logistical support.

Rafael Nieto, a Colombian military analyst, said many captured FARC soldiers have been found with Venezuelan military-issue weapons, though it is unclear how the rebels acquired them.

The AUC, which often operates alongside the Colombian military, has moved across the frontier to pursue FARC rebels and fighters with a smaller Colombian leftist insurgency, the National Liberation Army, or ELN. Some Venezuelan ranchers reportedly are bankrolling paramilitary forces.

What is uncertain, experts say, is the extent to which the Venezuelan and Colombian governments can prevent either leftist or rightist insurgencies from crossing the border.