Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has broken diplomatic relations with neighboring Colombia, accusing the close US ally of fabricating reports that Colombian rebels find safe haven inside Venezuela.
Souring already poor relations even more, Chavez said on Thursday that he was forced to sever ties because Colombian officials insist he has failed to move against leftist rebels who allegedly have taken shelter on Venezuelan territory.
At a meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Washington, Colombian Ambassador Luis Alfonso Hoyos presented photos, videos, witness testimony and maps of what he said were rebel camps inside Venezuela and challenged Venezuelan officials to let independent observers visit them.
Chavez responded within hours, suggesting that his conservative counterpart, outgoing Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, could be attempting to provoke a war.
Neither Chavez nor his OAS ambassador directly responded to the Colombian challenge to let people visit the alleged camps, but Chavez insisted Venezuela does everything possible to prevent members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the smaller National Liberation Army from crossing into Venezuelan territory.
In Washington, Hoyos said that roughly 1,500 rebels are hiding out in Venezuela and he showed fellow diplomats numerous aerial photographs of what he identified as rebel camps inside Venezuela.
He said Colombia’s government has repeatedly asked for Venezuela’s cooperation to keep guerrillas from slipping over the 2,300km border that separates the two countries. He said several rebel leaders are among those hiding in Venezuela.
“We have the right to demand that Venezuela doesn’t hide those wanted by Colombia,” Hoyos said, urging the OAS to investigate Colombia’s claims.
OAS Secretary-General Jose Miguel Insulza told reporters after the four-hour session that his organization could not mount an inspection mission without Venezuela’s consent.
Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro announced that Chavez’s government had closed its embassy in Bogota and demanded that Colombia’s ambassador in Caracas leave the country within 72 hours.
Chavez’s envoy to the OAS, Roy Chaderton, said the photographs that Hoyos showed didn’t provide any solid evidence of a guerrilla presence in Venezuela.
Chavez suggested the photographs could be bogus, saying Uribe “is capable of anything.”
The Venezuelan leader, a former paratrooper, contended Uribe could seek to spur an armed conflict with Venezuela before he leaves office next month. Colombian president-elect Juan Manuel Santos, who was visiting Mexico, declined to comment and deferred to the current administration in Colombia.
“Uribe is even capable of setting up a fake camp in one of the jungles on the Venezuelan side to attack it, bomb it and bring about a war between Colombia and Venezuela,” Chavez said.
The socialist leader has argued in the past that US officials are using Colombia in a broader plan to portray him as a supporter of terrorist groups to provide justification for US military intervention in Venezuela.
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