<a href=news.ft.com>Financial Times By Andrew Webb Vidal Published: April 22 2003 21:33 | Last Updated: April 22 2003 21:33

Trembling with fear, Juana points to a Venezuelan army helicopter thudding overhead, its down-draught peeling apart the dense jungle that blankets the no-man's land between Colombia and Venezuela.

"It was one of those," says Juana, a Colombian peasant who fled across the Río del Oro river into Venezuela after, she claims, Venezuelan aircraft strafed two Colombian villages, dispersing warring rightwing and leftwing Colombian paramilitary and guerrilla factions. "They flew low, there were explosions, and the paramilitaries ran into the forest."

Juana and several hundred other refugees are witnesses to the latest and most acute case of mounting tension between Colombia's pro-US government, led by Alvaro Uribe, and the militaristic leftwing Venezuelan administration of President Hugo Chávez.

Conflicting official accounts of last month's incident provide a backdrop for a summit meeting on Wednesday at which the two men - Mr Uribe, a workaholic, Mr Chávez a bombastic former paratrooper - will try to resolve their differences.

But any accord may only paper over the cracks in the countries' worsening relations. This would complicate Plan Colombia, the US-sponsored anti-narcotics and counter-insurgency programme, which would be dealt a blow if guerrillas and coca crops continued to seep out of Colombia into neighbouring countries.

Intelligence reports suggest the presence of Colombian guerrillas in Peru and Brazil, while drug crop cultivation has risen in Peru and Bolivia. But the situation on Colombia's border with Venezuela is the most critical. Mr Uribe's government is investigating what witnesses say were air strikes last month close to the villages of Tibú and La Gabarra in Colombia's Norte de Santander province, a seemingly unprecedented hostile act.

Martha Luca Ramrez, Colombia's defence minister, said the incursion appeared to have been a "potentially grave" incident in which the Venezuelan military came to the rescue of the 18,000-strong Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc).

At the time, Mr Chávez said he had ordered the air force to bomb an area "close" to the border after "irregulars" fired a missile at a helicopter and engaged with troops "inside" Venezuela. Local National Guardsmen said the air strikes occurred on Colombian soil a week after rightwing paramilitaries from the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), who were pursuing Farc units into Venezuela, clashed with the Venezuelan army.

Both countries have engaged in a war of words. This month Bogotá protested at accusations by José Rangel, Venezuela's vice-president, that the Colombian army colludes with the AUC.

"There are areas where Venezuela borders a de facto paramilitary state," said Mr Rangel, who has appealed for national unity in support of the Venezuelan military. "Colombia cannot continue dumping all of its delinquents and paramilitaries on its frontier."

Colombian officials suspect the Chávez government is stoking tensions to divert attention from growing economic difficulties and to rally nationalist sentiment, perhaps to cow and divide domestic opposition. The Venezuelan economy is expected to shrink 15-20 per cent this year, and opposition groups are seeking a referendum to unseat Mr Chávez. But the tensions are also being driven by opposing political sympathies.

"Uribe and Chávez are not naturally predisposed to be friendly to each other, and any spark on the border can exacerbate tensions," says Miguel Diaz, analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Mr Uribe, the US's staunchest ally in South America, is launching a military offensive against the Farc, and wants to pursue the rebels "across borders" - which the AUC already appears to be doing.

Mr Chávez, a former army officer who sees his Bolivarian revolution spreading across Latin America, strongly opposes Plan Colombia, on the grounds that it will push refugees and the warring combatants into Venezuela. A breakdown in relations between Bogotá and Caracas would all but terminate already limited cross-border security co-operation, analysts say, probably increasing the ease with which the Farc uses Venezuela as a sanctuary.

Top Venezuelan military officers deny allegations by Bogotá that they are turning a blind eye to Farc training camps in Venezuela, but concede that irregulars may, occasionally, cross the border. "Do Colombian subversives cross into Venezuela? It's possible," says General Julio Quintero, commander of the army's 2nd Infantry Division, in San Cristóbal. "However, our mission is to expel them back to Colombia."

But Venezuelans in the border region are already alarmed by the growing presence of the Fuerzas Bolivarianas de Liberación (FBL), a leftwing paramilitary group that, cattle-ranchers say, has been created with help from Chávez officials as a kidnapping and extortion "franchise" of the Farc. "There is no doubt the guerrillas are here," says Genaro Méndez, president of the local ranchers' association. "The issue is that other groups have now been formed, such as the FBL, trained by the Colombian guerrillas."

Additional reporting by James Wilson in Bogotá

<a href=asia.reuters.com>Asia Reuters Mon April 21, 2003 05:31 PM ET By Pascal Fletcher

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuela on Monday dismissed renewed charges by Colombia that it was sheltering leftist guerrillas, intensifying a dispute over border security two days before a bilateral presidential summit.

President Hugo Chavez and his Colombian counterpart, Alvaro Uribe, are due to meet on Wednesday in eastern Venezuela to try to defuse the controversy over the frontier and shore up ties battered by economic and political problems in both countries.

Relations between the two Andean neighbors, which share a rugged 1,400-mile border, have been strained by accusations from Colombia -- denied in Caracas -- that Chavez's government is allowing Colombian Marxist rebels to operate from Venezuelan territory.

"Venezuela gives no shelter to criminals of any nationality," Venezuelan Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel said in an angry response to charges from Colombian Attorney-General Luis Camilo Osorio.

Osorio said over the weekend that Venezuela was becoming a "haven for Colombian delinquents" and urged Venezuela to help rid the border of rebels, right-wing paramilitaries and drug traffickers.

Rejecting Osorio's comments as "a provocation," Rangel said in a statement: "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."

"A SANCTUARY FOR TERRORISTS"

Reaffirming Colombia's accusations, a Colombian senator alleged on Monday that a Colombian guerrilla leader was living in Venezuela under the protection of Chavez's government.

"Andres Paris lives in Caracas, protected by President Chavez's security services. ... Venezuela is turning into a sanctuary for terrorists," legislator Jimmy Chamorro told reporters. Paris is a leading figure in the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

There was no immediate Venezuelan reply to this accusation.

In a war of words in recent weeks, Chavez's government has accused the Colombian army of backing right-wing paramilitaries and allowing them to penetrate into Venezuela.

The latest heated exchange set the tone for what could be a prickly April 23 meeting between leftist Chavez and Uribe, a lawyer who has set himself the task of trying to defeat the Marxist rebels and bring peace to his country.

Uribe, whose father was killed by FARC rebels, has appealed to neighboring governments to denounce the FARC and a smaller rebel group as "terrorists" and act firmly against them.

But populist Chavez, who was first elected in 1998 and has declared a self-styled "revolution" in favor of his country's poor, has refused to label the Colombian rebels as "terrorists." He says he wants to maintain a neutral position to be able to contribute to a negotiated peace in Colombia.

His critics accuse him of having ideological sympathies for the Colombian guerrillas.

Chavez has denied the criticism, saying his armed forces will repel any illegal incursions into Venezuelan territory, whether by rebels, paramilitaries or the Colombian army.

"Venezuela, its government and people, want to have the best relations with Colombia. ... We hope the Uribe-Chavez meeting in Puerto Ordaz will be fruitful," Rangel said.

Also on the agenda for the talks in the industrial city of Puerto Ordaz will be trade between the two neighbors, which are major commercial partners.

<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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<a href=www.newsday.com>NewsDay.com By Mike Ceaser SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT April 20, 2003 Perija Mountains, Venezuela - These dark green mountains, where Colombian guerrillas roam and the Venezuelan military rarely ventures, are becoming a new frontier in illegal drug cultivation, according to recent reports. The Perija range, which straddles the Colombian border near the Caribbean coast, has long been a source of concern for drug control officials because its steep, remote slopes offer prime conditions for cultivating and hiding illicit crops. In recent weeks the 1,380-mile Venezuela-Colombia border has increasingly threatened to become a flashpoint for the two countries, with security problems brought on by drugs and guerrillas. Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe and Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez are set to discuss such issues in a meeting Wednesday. For more than a decade, the Venezuelan military, with U.S. cooperation, carried out eradication campaigns involving hundreds of soldiers who chopped down and yanked out fields of marijuana, opium poppies and coca, the raw material for cocaine. Last year, amid an aborted coup in April and serious political and social upheaval, Venezuela abandoned those efforts. This is not the first time Chávez has opted out of the U.S.-backed war on drugs. Shortly after becoming president in 1999, he banned U.S. anti-drug overflights for "sovereignty" reasons. While border military regiments are short of fuel and the manpower necessary to work on eliminating drug crops, some here suspect a political motivation in the eradication halt. The leftist Chávez has been repeatedly accused of aiding the Colombian guerrillas, which finance themselves partly by taxing the drug trade and are active in the Perija mountains. The range is "full" of drug crops, said a national guardsman in the nearby town of Machiques who participated in past eradications but requested anonymity. "The places we destroyed have regrown." Certainly, Venezuela's drug acreage is tiny compared with those in the traditional coca-growing nations of Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. In 2001, Venezuela eradicated 117 acres of coca and 96 of poppy, while the "big three" eliminated tens of thousands. Still, nobody knows the extent of the illegal crops in Venezuela since it has no monitoring program. And recent reports show that plantings in the Perija range have increased. A recently released State Department narcotics control report said that during the 2001 eradication coca fields as large as 20 acres were found in the Perija range for the first time. It added, "Three cocaine base labs in this region were discovered for the first time ever in Venezuela, indicating what could be a troubling new trend." Cesar Romero, a ranger in the Perija Mountains National Park, said that in the past few years rangers have discovered drug crops more frequently during patrols. Last September, he stumbled on an already-harvested poppy field covering about six acres. Last year Colombia's eradication program, part of the $1.9 billion U.S.-funded anti-narcotics program called Plan Colombia, reduced coca acreage for the first time, with a U.S. report finding a 15 percent drop over the year before and the United Nations finding a 30 percent decline. However, the advance was partly nullified by acreage rebounds to the south in Peru and Bolivia. Small coca plots have also been discovered in Ecuador. Critics of drug eradication say the shift of cultivation to other countries is the inevitable "balloon effect," in which a reduction in one nation only produces a surge elsewhere. "You can achieve a short-term reduction in a limited area ... but it pops up somewhere else," said Adam Isacson, who directs the Colombia program at the Center for International Policy in Washington. Like other areas where drug cultivation has flourished, the Perija mountains are lawless and poor. Except for occasional military patrols, the central government is nearly absent. The indigenous inhabitants have few marketable crops, since produce would spoil during the long mule trips to towns. Deputy Javier Armata, who represents the Yupa indigenous people in the legislature of western Venezuela's Zulia state, which contains the Perija range, said Colombian guerrillas give indigenous people cash, food and medicines in exchange for planting drug crops. The guerrillas "say that drug planting is the best way to earn money," Armata said. "They earn more." Still, according to military officers and news reports, most drug cultivation in the mountains is done by Colombian peasants. While Colombia's eradication has sharply reduced drug acreage in its southwest, coca plantings have surged in its east, across the border from Venezuela. And Colombia's civil war has forced thousands of peasants, some of them drug farmers, to seek refuge in Venezuela. John P. Walters, the U.S. drug czar, told the House Committee on International Relations on Feb. 27 that Venezuela's lack of control over its territory concerned Washington. Venezuela's "pressing political problems have created an opening in which narcoterrorists can operate with impunity," Walters testified. Deputy Fernando Villasmil, president of the Zulia state legislature, says the Chávez government has drastically reduced its military presence along the frontier, leaving an opening for guerrillas. "If [the Venezuelan government] doesn't take radical measures, [the drug crops] will expand in size," he said. "We will change from being a transit country for drugs into a producer country."

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Sunday, April 13, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher says the USA has informed Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Frias of its concern about recent armed incidents in the border badlands. 

Although Boucher did not specify, there is little doubt that he was referring to an alleged strafing of a Colombian border village by Venezuelan helicopters and allegations from Venezuelan Executive Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel of close collaboration between the Colombian army and paramilitaries in border areas.

Boucher claims that the incidents underline the need of both governments to confront terrorism and engage in regional cooperation.

Meanwhile, another Washington spokesman, Charles Barclay has been laying on the pressure, regarding negotiations between the government and the opposition, fearing that President Chavez Frias will renege on the recall referendum. 

• Barclay says the USA believes the solution of the crisis passes through current negotiations and elections. 

Venezuelan Ambassador to Washington, Bernardo Alvarez says he has told Washington that the National Executive celebrates April 11 as a victory for democracy and constitutionalism because of the widespread support that returned the President Hugo Chavez Frias to power. 

The latest news coming from the corridors of power in Washington is that Chavez Frias and Fidel Castro are attempting to use the war on Iraq as a smokescreen to repress and persecute domestic opposition. 

Meanwhile, Venezuelan Ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS) Jorge Valero maintains that relations between the USA and Venezuela are "generally speaking, normal and positive."

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