IS HUGO CHAVEZ, Venezuela's erratic strongman, friendly with terrorists?

It is a charge sometimes hurled at him by his more diehard conservative opponents, so far with little or no evidence. Now the question is more widely asked.

At a conference in Miami last week, General James Hill, who as commander of Southern Command is the United States' top soldier for Latin America, talked of his worries about Margarita, a Venezuelan tourist island in the Caribbean. He said it was a haven for activists from two Middle-Eastern extremist groups, Hamas and Hizbullah. Last month, Hasil Rahaham, a Venezuelan Muslim whom police suspect of links to al-Qaeda, was arrested at London's Gatwick airport after a grenade was found in his baggage. He had boarded the flight in Caracas. Days later, powerful bombs damaged the Colombian and Spanish embassies in Caracas. Opponents blame radical supporters of Mr Chávez.

The president, who has survived a recent two-month general strike by the opposition, claims to be leading a “Bolivarian revolution”. His political history of radical nationalism gave him colourful friendships: it is hard to judge whether these involved naivety or something more sinister. As a young army officer, he was close to Venezuelan guerrillas with links to Saddam Hussein and North Korea. After being democratically elected as Venezuela's president in 1999, he exchanged cordial letters with Ilich Ramírez Sánchez (“Carlos the Jackal”), a notorious Venezuelan terrorist serving a life sentence in a French jail.

In 2000, Mr Chávez became the first foreign leader to visit Baghdad since the Gulf war. He criticised the American attack on Afghanistan, saying “you can't fight terror with terror”. His more radical supporters demand that Mr Chávez oppose any attack on Iraq, and have looked askance at his current overtures to the United States, which include a promise to keep supplying it with oil.

None of this amounts to credible evidence of presidential complicity in terrorism. But Venezuelan intelligence agents say that operations to keep track of terrorist suspects have been given a low priority by Mr Chávez's government. They suspect that the Arab community in Margarita raises funds for terrorism—but in the Middle East, not Venezuela.

Claims of Middle-Eastern terrorism are not new in Latin America. American officials have long been watching the Levantine traders of the “tri-border” area where Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay meet. On March 7th, an Argentine judge asked Interpol to arrest four former Iranian officials in connection with a 1994 bombing of a Jewish community centre, which killed 85 people. Iran denies any involvement.

Probably more damaging to Mr Chávez are claims (which he denies) that he is friendly to guerrilla groups in next-door Colombia. Mr Chávez has declared Venezuela “neutral” in the conflict between Colombia's democratic government and its drug-funded rebels. That goes down badly with Colombians.

Colombia is especially annoyed at Venezuela's refusal to agree to joint anti-guerrilla operations along the porous border. Álvaro Uribe, Colombia's president, said recently that his government is “ready to fetch the terrorists that mistreat the Colombian people, from Venezuela or from whatever place they may be hiding”. This week, Venezuela's army chief replied that his troops would indeed drive out any rebels who cross the border.

Mr Uribe also wants Venezuela to define the leftist guerrillas of the FARC and ELN as terrorists. Venezuela's foreign minister says this would be “interference” in Colombian affairs. But Colombians note that Mr Chávez often describes as “terrorists” his own political opponents.

Officials from both countries say that the guerrillas use Venezuela for supplies and as a transport corridor, as well as extorting funds from its ranchers. Mr Chávez has downgraded border security. The army's most senior general (jobless because of his political dissidence) claims that there are three Colombian guerrilla camps inside Venezuela.

While it has been preoccupied with Iraq, the United States has been relaxed about Mr Chávez (although it all but applauded a military coup against him last April). But the Americans give much military aid to Colombia. And terrorism is an issue on which they are unlikely to welcome ambivalence from Mr Chávez.

www.voanews.com VOA News 13 Mar 2003, 13:39 UTC

Seven Latin American countries have signed an agreement pledging to work together to combat terrorism and drug trafficking.

Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela, the five Andean nations, signed the accord Wednesday during a summit of foreign and defense ministers in Bogota.

Representatives from Brazil and Panama also signed the agreement. The two nations, along with Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela, border Colombia.

The deal comes as Colombia struggles with a 39-year civil war that involves leftist rebels, rightist paramilitaries and the government. The conflict kills thousands of people each year.

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has asked that neighboring countries declare Colombia's outlawed groups terrorists. The United States lists the Andean nation's two main rebel groups, and their rivals, the paramilitaries, as terrorist organizations.

www.vheadline.com Posted: Thursday, March 13, 2003 By: Robert Rudnicki

During a trip to Bogota Colombia, Venezuela's Foreign (MRE) Minister Roy Chaderton Matos has accused the media of trying to promote an assassination attempt of President Hugo Chavez Frias. According to the Minister evidence exists of such a plan.

"I have here with me a series of evidence in which the Venezuelan and some foreign mass media in the hemisphere have made calls for the assassination of the President of Venezuela."

The Foreign Minister also accused the Venezuelan opposition "supported by the media" of encouraging an attempt on the President's life.

The comments came after Chaderton arrived in Colombia for talks with the region's other Foreign Ministers. During the visit the Minister is also expected to discuss a presidential level summit with Colombian counterpart in a bid to resolve the tensions that have built up of the past few weeks.

www.malaysiakini.com 4:06pm Thu Mar 13th, 2003

LONDON — Latin America is suddenly teeming with Islamic terrorist organisations, according to a string of high-profile statements by US officials and legislators.

This on-again-off-again theme was revived last week by the chief of the US Southern Command, General James Hill, and taken up by the US ambassador to Venezuela, Charles Shapiro.

A variant, linking Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez with al Qaeda and Hamas, was floated by seven Republican lawmakers in a letter to US Secretary of State Colin Powell.

General Hill told participants in a conference organised by the University of Miami's North-South Center, on March 3, that the Middle Eastern communities in Latin America were sending 'hundreds of millions of dollars' to Islamic 'terror' organisations.

www.kansascity.com Posted on Wed, Mar. 12, 2003 SUSANNAH A. NESMITH Associated Press

BOGOTA, Colombia - Colombia and several neighboring nations signed an accord to Wednesday to work together to fight terrorism and drug trafficking.

But the agreement did not specify how the nations would cooperate especially in Colombia, the world's principal producer of cocaine and site of violent insurgencies.

Colombia is fighting a 38-year war against several rebel and paramilitary groups, most of them financed through drug trafficking.

Colombian officials, who have complained that the rebels and their paramilitary rivals have found refuge in neighboring countries, and are hoping that now neighboring borders will be closed to them.

A senior U.S. official said the agreement - signed by Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Brazil and Panama - represented a turning point in regional relations.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Colombia's neighbors have in the past refused to help fight the leftist rebels, right-wing militias and drug rings.

"Now they've recognized it as a transnational problem," the official said.