Posted on 03/25/2002 1:45:40 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
LIMA, Peru (Reuters) - Colombian President Andres Pastrana said on Saturday he is worried that FARC guerrillas may be crossing into Venezuela, from where his government alleges they launched an attack on Colombia this week.
"Yes, logically we are worried," Pastrana told reporters in Lima in answer to a question about the attack, in which 38 Colombian troops and rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, died in clashes.
It was the heaviest death toll in an attack since peace talks with the Colombian Marxist rebels collapsed last month.
Venezuela said on Friday it was "insulted" by allegations that the attack was launched from its territory.
"The main thing is for there to be clarity," said Pastrana, who was in Lima for talks with President Bush, the leaders of Peru and Bolivia and Ecuador's vice president.
Pastrana praised Venezuela for taking swift action as soon as the incursion was reported and said authorities from both countries were "permanently in touch to clear up this issue."
Venezuela has increased border controls and said any Colombian rebel found in its territory would be driven out.
The report of the FARC incursion by Colombia's military was embarrassing for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has been accused repeatedly by local and foreign critics of sympathizing -- and even collaborating -- with Colombian guerrillas. Chavez denies the allegations.
Pastrana last month broke off peace talks with the 17,000-strong FARC and reclaimed an enclave he had ceded to them three years earlier after rebels flouted promises of peace and kidnapped a senator in a bold plane hijack.
Colombia's 38-year war, which pits leftist rebels against far-right paramilitary outlaws and the military, claims around 3,500 mostly civilian lives a year.
Pastrana said the Lima talks would focus on trade, not his Plan Colombia, into which Washington has sunk over $1 billion mostly military aid to fight the drugs trade in the world's top cocaine producer from which rebels and paramilitaries profit.
He said he talked with Bush on the sidelines of a U.N. development summit in Monterrey, Mexico, and he hailed Bush's willingness to allow U.S. aid to be used against insurgencies themselves -- something Congress must ratify.
"We hope very soon to be able to use this equipment to fight our common enemy, which is 'narcoterrorism'," he said.
Pastrana said he had no information that an unclaimed car bomb near the U.S. Embassy in Lima on Wednesday night, which killed nine people, could have been planted by groups linked to the FARC. That theory has been raised by some analysts in Lima.
****Inspired by Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi and Cuba's Fidel Castro, military strongman Chavez is turning oil-rich Venezuela into a populist, anti-U.S. dictatorship, say U.S. intelligence sources. They tell Insight that Chavez is providing a safe haven for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) narcoguerrillas, an 18,000-man insurgency that began decades ago as an offshoot of the local Communist Party and still clings to Marxist-Leninist ideology.-- Source
****Anti-aircraft missile experts from Cuba and Venezuela are probably working on the seven anti-aircraft missile bases that have been detected under construction in the distension zone. Armaments tracking detected the arrival of Stinger and Redeye anti-aircraft missiles from Syria several years ago. More shipments of anti-aircraft missiles and launchers have probably been made by the Russian mafia, closely linked to the FARC because of its unique ability to pay in highly lucrative cocaine, which Russia distributes throughout Europe.--Source
****FARC Rebel planned to assassinate Colombia Pres. Pastrana says Venezuela Pres "Chavez 'Trusted' Him"-- BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - A leftist rebel accused of plotting the assassination of Colombia's president said Thursday night that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez ``trusted'' him completely. Diego Serna, a confessed member of the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, stunned the nation when he appeared in a video next to Chavez - pulling out his chair, handing him a glass of water - during a state visit in May.-- Source
****Chavez: Colombian Rebel Contact 'Humanitarian'-denies collaborating with FARC-- Chavez, who spoke in Bolivia late on Wednesday, was commenting on a video released in Caracas by four opposition journalists that allegedly showed a Venezuelan military team negotiating with FARC guerrillas inside Colombia in July 2000. Opponents of Chavez, a left-wing former paratrooper who attempted an abortive coup in 1992 before winning elections six years later, have frequently accused him of sympathizing with Colombia's Marxist rebels and even of cooperating with them. --Source
****Chavez security chief alleges FARC links-- I am resigning because I disagree with the DISIP's policy of providing security to Colombian guerrillas ... this policy is more than just irregular, it approaches treason to Venezuela given the innumerable deaths, kidnappings and other crimes for which these groups are responsible in our country." Egui Bastidas said 90 percent of his fellow officers "obey orders but do not agree with them" and called on President Hugo Chavez to reverse his policy of tacit support for the rebels. "All the peace negotiations there are over and open confrontations between the guerrillas and the Colombian government have begun. Are they going to carry on letting them cross over into Venezuelan territory?" Egui Bastidas asked. The former DISIP official called on the Armed Forces to issue a statement about their view of the Chávez government's alleged support for the Colombian guerrillas.--Source
A Terrorist Regime Waits in the Wings--[Excerpt] The Taliban regime is gone, but a new one soon may emerge - not in far-off Afghanistan, but in Colombia, a country nearly twice the size and on the front door of the United States.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), flush with a fortune in drug money and rested after three years of peace talks, is fighting a fierce battle against Colombia's democratic government and threatens to install its own totalitarian, anti-Western regime. If it succeeds, analysts say, the Marxist-Leninist FARC, which is on the State Department's list of terrorist groups, would become the world's newest outlaw regime and even more of a haven for terrorists and drug traffickers.
A Rand Corp. report prepared last summer for the Pentagon calls the Colombian crisis "the most serious security challenge in the Western Hemisphere since the Central American wars of the 1980s." [End Excerpt]
Just another 3d world dictator
Cuba's Castro Says Venezuelan Chavez Speaks for Him -[Excerpt] Hailing the Venezuelan leader's "spirit and enthusiasm", the veteran Cuban president said Chavez would address the U.N. conference in Mexico as president of the Group of 77, which represents more than 130 developing countries.
"No other voice could be better than yours to defend the interests of the (Group of) 77. ... You will have the possibility of putting forward the point of view of the progressive people of the world," Castro added.
Chavez, hosting a special 100th edition of his "Hello President" show lasting nearly seven hours, also received calls of congratulation from Guatemalan President Alfonso Portillo and the Dominican Republic's president, Hipolito Mejia.
The Cuban leader's public praise for Chavez was certain to infuriate political opponents of the Venezuelan leader and his self-proclaimed "Bolivarian Revolution". [End Excerpt]
This is very worrisome. For a while, the terrorists were coming into Panama’s eastern boarder for their R & R causing death and mayhem where ever they vacationed. This is going to get worse for everybody in this area. I can’t think of a solution. These areas are all jungle – like Vietnam.
It looks like the terrorists are on the run all around the world.
We need to root them out and eliminate them.
It is worrisome. We all need to be concerned and alert.
The first sign of problems was the announcement in January that octogenarian Luis Miquilena, one of Venezuela's most influential politicians, would step down as interior and justice minister. Having used Miquilena to gain credibility with Venezuela's established left-wing parties, Chavez discarded the advocate of moderation and democracy in favor of Venezuelan navy Capt. Ramon Rodriguez Chacin, a hardened Marxist who is Chavez's personal liaison to Colombia's narcoguerrillas.
The early February decision by Chavez to replace Gen. Guaicaipuro Lameda as president of the state oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela (PDV), marks yet another sign of the deterioration in the country's political scene. Lameda received high marks for his management of PDV; that is, the military man allowed the professionals inside the company to run the oil monopoly without political interference. Venezuela produces 2.5 million barrels of oil a day and has the largest oil reserves in the Western Hemisphere.
The appointment of Central Bank Director Gaston Parra, a stalwart Chavez supporter and leftist crony with ties to Cuba, as the new head of PDV adds weight to the view that Chavez is increasingly isolated. Parra is the oil company's fourth president in little more than three years. Neither the Chavez government nor PDV officially explained Lameda's removal, but the reaction from foreign oil companies operating in Venezuela is decidedly negative. PDV workers at all levels greeted Parra with great disdain and antipathy. [End Excerpt]
****More ominously, the same sources with direct access to the highest levels of the Venezuelan military tell INSIGHT that the Cuban connection remains strong, directly contradicting U.S. press reports that the Cubans have soured on Chavez. Indeed, sources in the U.S. intelligence community tell INSIGHT that the Cubans have their claws deep into the chaotic Chavez regime. One senior U.S. official reveals that the entire security force protecting Chavez is made up of Cuban military personnel and that Venezuela's elite military intelligence force also has been largely penetrated by Cuba's intelligence services.
"Chavez may survive his latest problems," says Lee Rivas, a retired U.S. Army colonel who served in Venezuela and now consults for foreign companies there, "but the days of the Bolivarian revolution are numbered." The native Caraceño says a leading contender to replace Chavez may be Francisco Arias Cardenas, a one-time Chavez ally who now is among his fiercest critics. Foreign media outlets overlook the fact that Arias, a former army officer who opposed Chavez in the 1999 presidential elections, won 37.5 percent of the vote.
Perhaps the most significant factor working against Chavez is the professional and careful Venezuelan army, which increasingly is uncomfortable with Chavez's public diatribes and especially his use of the army for "social work." One Venezuelan military man who was trained in the United States tells INSIGHT that his colleagues in the officer corps are unhappy with Chavez's embrace of Colombian guerrillas and the close ties to Cuba's corrupt military, both of which actively deal in narcotics. ******
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