President Hugo Chavez said Sunday that Venezuelan police had arrested at least 77 suspected Colombian paramilitary members who were allegedly training to strike against his government. Opposition leaders said the raids were a government-hatched scheme meant to divert attention from their presidential recall effort.
Chavez said 53 Colombian paramilitary members were arrested in a raid on a farm early Sunday, and another 24 paramilitary recruits were caught after fleeing into the countryside. However. one of those arrested said the detained men did not belong to any organized right-wing Colombian paramilitary group.
In his weekly Hello President radio and TV broadcast, Chavez said federal agents were uncovering additional clues and searching for more suspected paramilitary members. He said the arrests were proof of a conspiracy against the government of this leading oil-producing nation, involving Cuban and Venezuelan exiles in Florida and neighboring Colombia.
PHOTO: AFP
The allegations come at a time when an opposition petition campaign to force a recall election against Chavez is entering a decisive phase.
Chavez claimed that the plot was backed by Venezuela's mostly pro-opposition news media, adding that the raids had "eliminated the seed of a terrorist group."
"Now they are importing terrorists," Chavez said of his opponents, "and they are looking for people here."
Henrique Capriles, a mayor who supports the opposition, rejected Chavez's allegations that the captured men were being financed by opposition. He called the raids "a show organized by the government" to turn attention away from efforts to hold a presidential recall vote.
Capriles said municipal police were the first to discover the alleged paramilitaries, and then tipped off federal agents.
In Colombia, President Alvaro Uribe praised Venezuela for the arrests.
"What we need is that the governments of both neighboring countries help each other capture criminals from Colombia, guerrillas or paramilitaries operating over there," Uribe said.
A right-wing Colombian paramilitary leader, Salvador Mancuso, denied his United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia were involved.
"We deny the accusations against us by Venezuelan leaders," Mancuso said.
Mancuso claimed that Chavez was working with Colombia's two largest leftist rebel groups.
Chavez has denied this allegation, which was also raised in a recent US State Department report on terrorism.
The leftist Chavez -- who was briefly ousted in a 2002 coup -- said he had ordered police to capture "each and every one of the terrorists" involved in the alleged plot.
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