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.”
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