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Latin American leaders pull back from brink

South America moved away from talk of war as the presidents of Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador agreed to end a bitter dispute triggered by a Colombian cross-border raid with testy handshakes and an apology.

After intense regional diplomacy and an emotional debate laced with accusations and furious speeches, Latin American leaders on Friday approved a declaration resolving to work for a peaceful end to the crisis, which saw Venezuela and Ecuador send troops to their borders and Colombia accuse its neighbors of backing leftist rebels seeking to topple its government.

The leaders at the summit in the Dominican Republic wasted little time in reversing their steps toward conflict.

Colombia pledged not to follow through on its threat to seek genocide charges against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez at an international court for allegedly supporting the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) which finances its insurgency through kidnapping and the cocaine trade.

Nicaragua said it would restore diplomatic relations with Colombia, broken off only the day before. Chavez said trade with Colombia should "keep increasing," two days after saying he didn't want even "a grain of rice" from his neighbor.

The statement approved by the presidents notes that Colombian President Alvaro Uribe apologized for the March 1 raid inside Ecuadorean territory that killed 25 people, including a senior rebel commander, and that he pledged never to violate another nation's sovereignty again.

The statement also commits all the countries to fight threats to national stability from "irregular or criminal groups," a reference to Colombia's accusation that its two neighbors have ties to Colombian rebels.

Meanwhile, a top FARC leader was killed by his own chief of security, who gave Colombian troops the leader's severed hand as proof, the country's defense minister said.

Ivan Rios was the second top rebel killed in a week, a major setback for the FARC.

"The FARC has suffered a new, major blow," Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos told reporters on Friday, calling Rios' death "yet another demonstration that the FARC is falling apart."

He said troops launched an operation designed to capture Rios on Feb. 17 after receiving tips that he was in a mountainous area straddling the western Colombian provinces of Caldas and Antioquia, and engaged the guerrillas' outer security ring seven times.

On Thursday night, he said, a guerrilla known as Rojas came to the troops with Rios' severed right hand, laptop computer and ID, saying he had killed his boss three days earlier. Rojas handed himself over to the soldiers.

It was unclear what motivated the killing, but Santos said it was to "relieve the military pressure" because the rebels were "surrounded, without supplies and without communication."
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