Venezuela Supports FARC, While FARC is Looking for Uranium

Via iht.com -

BOGOTA, Colombia: Judging by the fever-pitch rhetoric, the Andes region was girding for war on Monday. The leftist presidents of Venezuela and Ecuador recalled ambassadors from Bogota and began moving tanks and troops to reinforce their borders with Colombia.
But will this political theater lead to war? Probably not.

Relations have clearly hit a new low between President Alvaro Uribe and his leftist neighbors. President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela warned darkly that Colombia and its U.S. military backers may trigger "war in South America" with commando raids like the one that killed a key leftist rebel commander across the border in Ecuador.

Ecuador's President Rafael Correa called Colombia's "a foul and lying government that doesn't want peace." And even the ailing Fidel Castro weighed in, writing that "The trumpets of war are being heard in our continent's south as a result of the genocidal plans of the Yankee empire."

But there is little appetite for armed conflict in the region, despite Chavez's recent purchases of $3 billion in Russian arms, including 53 military helicopters, 100,000 Kalashnikov rifles and 24 SU-30 Sukhoi fighter jets.

The economic costs, to begin with, are far too high.

Too many people depend on cross-border trade worth $5 billion a year, most of it Colombian exports sorely needed by Venezuelans already suffering milk and meat shortages. Ecuador depends on some $1.8 billion in trade with Colombia.

And militarily, Colombia has become a formidable foe, thanks in large part to $5 billion in aid from Washington since 2000. U.S. military advisers are sprinkled throughout Colombia's military, and Washington could quickly ramp up support if war broke out.

Chavez's critics say his saber-rattling is intended to deflect attention from mounting domestic woes.

"You can't keep playing with the future of this country," said Venezuelan opposition leader Manuel Rosales, whom Chavez defeated handily in the last presidential election. He accused Chavez of trying to "stir up nationalist sentiment to hide the truth of this country, which is falling to pieces."

Chavez's cause also wasn't helped by Colombia's discovery of what it described as damaging documents in three laptop computers seized at the jungle camp of Raul Reyes, the slain spokesman for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Reyes was the rebels' main interlocutor with foreign governments and other emissaries, reporting directly to the FARC's seven-man ruling secretariat, of which he was a member.

According to Colombia's national police director, Gen. Oscar Naranjo, the files seized in Saturday's raid are "tremendously revelatory" and are being examined with the help of U.S. experts.

One document, apparently written in February, suggests Venezuela recently gave the rebels $300 million, while another suggests the rebels were shopping for 50 kilos of uranium, said Naranjo.

Still others refer to longstanding ties between Chavez and Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda, the top FARC leader, he said. "This implies more than cozying up, but an armed alliance between the FARC and the Venezuelan government."