Colombian President Alvaro Uribe warned on Tuesday of the “enormously damaging” effect of a potential regional arms race following Venezuela’s latest purchase of Russian weaponry.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez signed new deals last week with visiting Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who said later the military sales could top fUS$5 billion.
Between 2005 and 2007, Venezuela also bought US$4.4 billion in Russian weapons, including Sukhoi jet fighters, combat helicopters and Kalashnikov automatic rifles.
“Colombia is a country that has faced the challenge of internal violence, but does not participate in the arms race,” said Uribe, a staunch US ally.
“We must meet our duties to fight terrorism, but we also believe that an arms race is enormously damaging,” he told reporters in the northern Caribbean port of Cartagena.
Bogota has repeatedly accused Caracas of supporting leftist guerrillas with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a charge Chavez vehemently denies.
Venezuela, in turn, claims that a new agreement granting the US military access to Colombian bases represents a potential risk to his country. It froze ties with Bogota in July last year.
The growing military cooperation between Russia and Venezuela, including joint navy exercises with Russian warships in the Caribbean in 2008, has raised worries in the US that Moscow is encroaching on its traditional zone of influence.
US officials on Monday publicly worried that the arms may wind up elsewhere in Latin America.
Chavez dismissed Washington’s reaction as “cynical,” adding that US military spending was higher than all the military expenditures of the rest of the world combined.
Meanwhile, Venezuela said it had arrested eight Colombians suspected of spying on the oil exporting nation’s electricity system during power shortages that have been denting Chavez’s popularity.
The arrests could stoke tensions between the Andean neighbors ahead of Colombia’s presidential election next month. They follow months of jibes between the two governments.
“The Colombian government will have to explain this,” Chavez said during a televised Cabinet meeting. “Some of them had Colombian army ID cards.”
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS