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Capture of FARC Rebel Leader Divides Latin American Neighbors (Rice: Chavez deeply troubling) ***LAS MERCEDES DE TASAJERA, Venezuela, Jan. 18 - Rodrigo Granda is a leading operative in Colombia's oldest rebel group, a man who for years roamed the world drumming up support for his organization, with Colombia's government in hot pursuit.

Yet, for two years before his capture last month in Caracas, Venezuela's capital, he lived comfortably in a two-story house in this picturesque mountain community that is a weekend retreat for Venezuelan Army generals, Caracas businessmen and well-off retirees. He came and went freely, ordering construction supplies for his home and frolicking in his pool while still serving as the "foreign minister" for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the authorities in Bogotá, Colombia, say. In fact, he had enjoyed the privileges of Venezuelan citizenship and had voted in a recent election.

The revelations about Mr. Granda's apparently breezy day-to-day life in Venezuela and the murky operation that led to his capture in Caracas have led to the most serious diplomatic crisis between neighbors who are ideological opposites: the leftist Venezuelan government of President Hugo Chávez and the conservative Colombian administration of President Álvaro Uribe.

The dispute has drawn in the Bush administration, which on Jan. 15 vocally threw its support behind Mr. Uribe, Washington's closest ally in Latin America. Then on Tuesday in her Senate confirmation hearing, Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state-designate, said that Venezuela's government had been a "negative" force in the region while stifling the opposition at home.

"We are very concerned about a democratically elected leader who governs in an illiberal way, and some of the steps he's taken against the media, against the opposition, I think are really very deeply troubling," Ms. Rice said at the hearing. ….***

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