Chavez moves tanks to border as dispute with pro-US Colombian president deepens

Published on Sunday 2 March 2008 21:18

VENEZUELA'S president, Hugo Chavez, ordered tank battalions to the Colombian border and mobilised warplanes yesterday after Colombian troops made a strike against rebels in neighbouring Ecuador.

Mr Chavez told his defence minister: "Move 10 battalions to the border with Colombia." He ordered the Venezuelan embassy in Bogota closed and said all embassy personnel would be withdrawn.

The announcements pushed relations to their tensest point of his nine-year presidency, and Mr Chavez warned that Colombia could spark a war in South America.

He called the US-allied government in Bogota "a terrorist state" and labelled President Alvaro Uribe "a criminal."

Mr Chavez condemned Colombia's killing of a senior rebel commander, Raul Reyes, and 16 other guerrillas on Saturday, saying they were killed while they slept in a camp in Ecuadorean territory.

He said Colombia "flagrantly violated Ecuador's sovereignty".

"It wasn't any combat. It was a cowardly murder, " Mr Chavez said on his weekly TV and radio programme. "We pay tribute to a true revolutionary, who was Raul Reyes," he added, recalling that he had met the rebel in Brazil in 1995. He called him a "good revolutionary".