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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message -----
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A
title=tanstl@aol.com href="mailto:tanstl@aol.com">David Sladky</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=undisclosed-recipients:
href="mailto:undisclosed-recipients:">undisclosed-recipients:</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Sunday, July 25, 2010 6:53 AM</DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> Venezuela breaks with Colombia over guerrilla
accusations</DIV></DIV>
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<H2>Venezuela breaks with Colombia over guerrilla accusations</H2>
<H5>By Bill Van Auken <BR>24 July 2010</H5>Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez
broke off diplomatic relations with neighboring Colombia Thursday over charges
made by that country’s government that Caracas has sheltered Colombian
guerrillas on its territory.<BR>In a histrionic presentation to the Organization
of American States in Washington, DC, Colombia’s ambassador accused the Chavez
government of “continued and permanent tolerance” of guerrillas from the FARC
(the Spanish acronym for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) on
Venezuelan soil.<BR>The Colombian ambassador to the OAS, Luis Hoyos, claimed
that some 1,500 FARC members are present at dozens of camps on the Venezuelan
side of the border between the two countries. He insisted that an international
commission must be created for the purpose of going to the region and
investigating Colombia’s accusations and charged Chavez with refusing to
“collaborate in the anti-terrorist struggle.”<BR>Consisting of satellite
coordinates, videotapes and photographs of supposed victims of guerrilla
attacks, the Colombian <EM>dossier</EM> resembled nothing so much as the
“weapons of mass destruction” presentation made by the US Secretary of State
Colin Powell to the United Nations in the run-up to the Iraq war.<BR>Venezuela’s
ambassador to the OAS, Roy Chaderton, accused the Colombian government of trying
to create “the atmosphere for an armed intervention in Venezuela” and dismissed
Bogota’s supposed evidence, saying that there was no way of knowing where the
videos and photographs presented to the inter-American body had been
taken.<BR>Chaderton compared the veracity of the allegations by the Colombian
government to the so-called “false positives”—the term used to describe innocent
civilians deliberately murdered by the Colombian army in order to increase its
body count of guerrillas supposedly killed in battle.<BR>The charges were made
at a special session of the OAS convened at Colombia’s request. While the
majority of the country’s 32 member states had proposed putting off the
presentation, the government of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe succeeded in
holding the session with strong backing from the Obama administration in
Washington.<BR>The extraordinary character of the session was underscored by the
resignation of the Ecuadorean ambassador to the OAS, Francisco Proaño, the
current president of the body’s permanent council, who had been instructed by
his government not to set a date for the Colombian indictment of Venezuela in
order to “give dialogue a chance.”<BR>There is nothing new about Colombia’s
accusations. In 2003, for example there was the sensational account of Moises
Boyer, who approached Colombian intelligence and gave an interview to the
right-wing daily <EM>El Espectador</EM> in Bogota claiming that he had
personally followed a FARC commander to Caracas to receive money from the
country’s vice president. It soon emerged that the story was a complete
fabrication, forcing the newspaper to publish a retraction.<BR>More recently,
Colombia charged that anti-tank weapons found in a guerrilla camp had been
provided by the Venezuelan government, when they in fact had been stolen from
one of the country’s military installations in the 1990s, something well-known
to the Colombian authorities.<BR>The 1,400-mile border between the two countries
is in many areas undeveloped and ill-defined, with the Colombian government
unable to assert its control in many areas against not only the FARC, but also
right-wing paramilitary groups and narco-traffickers.<BR>One reason for the rush
to convene the OAS session is that Uribe is leaving office early next month,
having failed in his attempt to change the Colombian constitution and
appropriate a third term as president. His successor, Juan Manuel Santos, will
be inaugurated August 7.<BR>Santos, a member of Colombia’s wealthy oligarchy,
served as Uribe’s minister of defense and is deeply implicated in the human
rights crimes of the military. In the election campaign, however, he had pledged
to improve relations between Colombia and Venezuela, which had been formally
“frozen” before being broken off entirely this week. Santos has remained silent
about the present confrontation.<BR>“The pathetic media show on Thursday was a
desperate attempt to damage a possible normalization of bilateral relations, in
which the intrigue of the US Embassy in Bogota, whose ambassador was consulted
by the defense minister before offering his press conference, has not been
absent,” the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry said on Friday.<BR>There can be little
doubt that behind Uribe’s decision to stage a provocation as he prepares to
leave the presidential palace is Washington’s own desire to unleash a fresh
crisis in South America in order to further its own interests in the region. The
Colombian president has functioned as the chief US puppet in the hemisphere,
while receiving the greatest amount of US aid—some $7.3 billion since 2000, the
lion’s share going to the country’s security forces.<BR>The Obama administration
lost little time in solidarizing itself with the Uribe government’s dubious
charges. “There should be an investigation,” US State Department spokesman P. J.
Crowley said. “We think that Venezuela itself has responsibilities to be
forthcoming in responding to the important information presented by Colombia.”
The charges by the Uribe government, he said, “should be taken very
seriously.”<BR>Crowley added that the State Department was not surprised by the
charges, as since 2006—under the Bush administration—Venezuela had been “judged
not to be fully cooperating on antiterrorism efforts.”<BR>Under the pretext of
combating “terrorism” and drugs, the Obama administration has pursued an even
more aggressive policy in Latin America than Bush. Colombia has been a key part
of this strategy, with Washington secretly negotiating an agreement that gives
it control of seven military bases in the country as well as access to many
other facilities.<BR>While the Obama administration has claimed that the bases
are meant to combat drug trafficking, the deal has drawn fire from governments
throughout the region, including that of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva,
which has been closely aligned with Washington, but sees the bases as a threat
to its own expansionist aims in the region.<BR>In a further escalation of US
military intervention, the Obama administration secured an agreement with Costa
Rica’s new president, Laura Chinchilla, to allow the entry of seven thousand US
troops together with nearly 50 warships, as well as combat aircraft and
helicopters, also supposedly to combat drugs.<BR>Deals have also been reached in
Panama and Peru for new US bases, as well as in Honduras, where the US backed
the right-wing coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya.<BR>Finally, Obama has
kept in place the decision of George W. Bush to revive the US Navy’s Fourth
Fleet, which had been out of commission since the aftermath of the Second World
War, allowing for a major escalation of US military operations in the
region.<BR>It is in this context that the tensions between Colombia and
Venezuela contain serious dangers. With its economic and political power
increasingly challenged by rivals in China, Europe and Latin America itself, US
imperialism is seeking the means and the pretext for employing its continuing
military superiority.<BR><BR>
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