Chavez Warns of War with Colombia
March 3rd, 2008It’s an energy story. Keeping an eye on the oil.
Via: AP:
Venezuela and Ecuador ordered troops to their borders with Colombia, sharply raising tensions after Colombia killed a top rebel leader on Ecuadorean soil.
President Hugo Chavez on Sunday promised Venezuela would respond militarily if Colombia violates its border, where he ordered tanks as well as thousands of troops. He also ordered closed Venezuela’s embassy in Bogota.
Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa said he deployed troops to the border while also withdrawing his government’s ambassador from Bogota and expelling Colombia’s top diplomat.
“There is no justification,” Correa said Sunday night, snubbing an earlier announcement from Colombia that it would apologize for the military incursion.
Chavez called the killing of rebel leader and spokesman Raul Reyes and 16 other guerrillas on Saturday an attack by a “terrorist state,” saying it shows Colombian President Alvaro Uribe is a “criminal.”
“Mr. Defense Minister, move 10 battalions to the border with Colombia for me, immediately — tank battalions. Deploy the air force,” Chavez said during his weekly TV and radio program. “We don’t want war, but we aren’t going to permit the U.S. empire, which is the master (of Colombia) … to come divide us.”
Correa said Colombia deliberately carried out the strike beyond its borders, flying deep into Ecuador to bomb the rebel camp from the south. The Ecuadorean leader said the rebels were “bombed and massacred as they slept, using precision technology.”
The Colombian military said the camp was located just over a mile from the border.
Colombian officials have long complained that rebels are allowed to take refuge across its borders in both Ecuador and Venezuela.
Colombia said after the assault that FARC “terrorists” including Reyes “have had the custom of killing in Colombia and taking refuge in the territory of neighboring countries.”
In Chile, President Michelle Bachelet offered to mediate in the conflict.
“A situation like this requires an explanation from Colombia to Ecuadoreans, to the Ecuadorean president and to the entire region,” Bachelet said. “We are very worried.”
Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon also offered to helps and urged the countries to begin talking “within the framework of the appropriate regional organizations.”
colombia allowed itself become between a rock and a hard place generations ago, in my view, but i save my pontificating for The Agonist. (a brief aside: you came to mind earlier today when i posted there, because it was info and tech-related, and my rare visit to wired.com also had earlier brought you to mind in the first place, god knows why. boys_and_their_info_toys)
anyway…
ipsnews had an interesting contribution to the Venezuela/Colombia story:
COLOMBIA: Ex-Hostages Call for Political Solution to Conflict
By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Feb 29 (IPS) – The solution to Colombia’s armed conflict must be a political one, and the government should “demilitarise” an area in order to negotiate a humanitarian swap of hostages held by the FARC guerrillas for imprisoned insurgents, the four hostages who were released this week said in the Venezuelan capital.
That view is shared by the highest profile hostage held by the rebels, former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, who is in extremely poor health, said Luis Eladio Pérez at a press conference in which he was accompanied by Gloria Polanco, Jorge Géchem and Orlando Beltrán.
The four former Colombian legislators were handed over Wednesday by the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) to envoys sent into the jungle on helicopters by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who received them as guests in Caracas.
“We want to urge the different parties to understand that the solution must be political,” said Pérez. “If President Álvaro Uribe stubbornly insists on military rescue attempts, what he is going to receive are 30 or 40 corpses, because that would lead to a massacre, as ordered by the FARC secretariat (high command) in case of an absurd attack in one of those remote swampy jungle areas.”
“We need a political solution to the conflict in Colombia, and a first ray of hope has emerged with the participation of President Chávez and (Colombian Liberal Party) Senator Piedad Córdoba,” said former senator Géchem.
Polanco, who drew tears from reporters talking about their experiences in captivity, said that if the municipalities of Pradera and Florida are not demilitarised, “our companions (some 40 remaining hostages, including politicians, members of the military and police, and three U.S. military contractors) could die. Life must be valued more than a few kilometres of land.”
The FARC are demanding that the military be withdrawn from those two municipalities in southwestern Colombia for 45 days in order to negotiate a hostage-for-prisoner exchange in that area, which would be under the control of the insurgents and international observers.
The guerrillas have been holding hostages, some for over a decade, with the aim of trading them for around 500 rebels held in prisons in Colombia.
Pérez said he and his fellow former hostages would present a proposal to Presidents Uribe, Chávez and Nicolás Sarkozy of France — who said he is willing to personally fly in and pick up Betancourt, a dual French-Colombian citizen, if necessary — but added that “we must not go public with it until we present it to them.”
Chávez, for his part, has proposed “setting up a group of friendly countries along the lines of the Contadora group (which played a key role in bringing peace to Central America two decades ago) to achieve a humanitarian exchange. It could immediately be set up to receive envoys sent by (FARC chief Manuel) Marulanda and the government, to discuss the hostages’ release.”
..and it continues further as linked…