Bush backs Colombia as fear of Latin American war looms

Published on Tuesday 4 March 2008 21:01

COLOMBIA last night won the backing of George Bush, the US president, despite escalating the region's crisis by accusing neighbouring Venezuela of genocide.

Mr Bush weighed into the crisis for the first time since Colombian forces provoked outrage by entering Ecuador and killing a leading leftist rebel. He accused Venezuela's president, Hugo Chavez, of provocative manoeuvres and warned that he opposed any act of aggression in the region.

Mr Chavez, who has threatened to stop selling oil to the United States if it attacks, has warned war could break out.

Colombia's president, Alvaro Uribe, is charging his Venezuelan counterpart with genocide, insisting Mr Chavez has been supporting Marxist guerrillas as they engage in massacres.

The Colombian declarations are the latest chapter in a deepening regional crisis which began last Saturday when the Colombian air force bombed a rebel camp inside Ecuadorean territory. Raul Reyes, a commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), was killed. Colombian troops followed up the strike, moving into Ecuador and recovering the corpse of Reyes as well as three laptop computers and a pile of documents.

The intelligence they contained, according to the Colombian authorities, proves that Mr Chavez has been supporting Farc and that Ecuador also has close links with the rebels.

General Oscar Naranjo, Colombia's police chief, said: "I can also affirm that there was a payment for the Farc from the government of President Chavez of $300 million."

Colombia's vice-president, Francisco Santos, in Geneva yesterday, said that information from the computers also showed that Farc has been trying to buy uranium to build a dirty bomb, insisting that the rebel group represents an international terrorist threat. Farc is on both US and European lists of terrorist organisations.

"Terrorist groups, based on the economic power of drug trafficking, constitute a serious threat not to just our country but to the entire Andean and Latin American region," Mr Santos said.

It is not only Venezuela and Ecuador, which have now moved troops up the border, which have been critical of the Colombian actions. Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Nicaragua and Peru have spoken out against the bombing raid, and in Europe, Italy and Germany have also expressed their concern.

Colombians however are squarely behind their president. A poll found that 83 per cent of the public back the attack on Reyes. "Chavez is a lunatic," said Raul Gonzalez, 38 a company manager, "a lunatic who lives next to us and is heavily armed."

Mr Chavez has accused Mr Uribe of being a puppet of Washington and turning Colombia into "the Israel of the Americas". This theme was picked up by president Rafael Correa of Ecuador, who warned: "Latin America will become another Middle East."

HIGH COST OF ANTI-TERROR RAID

COLOMBIA is not just facing diplomatic consequences for entering Ecuador to kill a rebel leader.

Venezuela and Ecuador are also key trading partners with bilateral commerce worth over 4 billion a year.

Venezuela is, after the US, Colombia's most important trading partner. Yesterday, Hugo Chavez ordered the border closed and lines of lorries waited on the Colombian side in the vain hope that it would open.

Alvaro Uribe, backed by Washington to the tune of 300 million a year, has made the military defeat of the Farc the cornerstone of his government.

Sources in the Colombian army now wonder what the response of the United States should be if there are armed clashes. "Our fear is that the overstretched US will be unable to help us," said an army colonel.