Venezuela's Hugo Chavez allegedly helped Colombian, Spanish militants forge ties

Chávez (Manuel Diaz - AP)

By Juan Forero
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 20, 2010; A09

MACHIQUES, VENEZUELA -- For two years, Colombian officials have accused Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez of providing arms and sanctuary to Marxist rebels intent on toppling Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, Washington's closest ally in a turbulent region.

Now, based on documents and witness testimony, Chávez is facing fresh accusations that his government has gone well beyond assisting the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. Documents seized from two subversive groups, along with information provided by former Colombian guerrillas, suggest that Venezuela facilitated training sessions here between the FARC and ETA, a separatist group in Spain that uses assassinations and bombings in its effort to win independence for the northern Basque region.

The evidence led Judge Eloy Velasco of the National Court in Madrid to level charges of terrorism and conspiracy to commit murder in March against a Chávez government official, Arturo Cubillas, and a dozen members of the FARC and ETA. Spanish authorities want Venezuela to extradite those accused, but so far the Chávez government has not responded to Velasco's international warrant.

The latest revelations, largely based on information collected by Spanish investigators in Colombia, Venezuela and France, prompted Arturo Valenzuela, the State Department's assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere affairs, to declare in a congressional hearing in March that the Obama administration is "extremely concerned" by the allegations.

With Chávez hamstrung by harsh economic conditions, some in the U.S. Congress worry that the Venezuelan president could increasingly radicalize and forge closer links with subversive organizations or nations such as Iran, Sudan and Belarus.

"As he gets more bogged down domestically by the natural consequences of capricious rule, we are likely to see more troubling relationships," Carl Meacham, senior aide to Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said by phone from Washington.

Chávez strikes back

The new spotlight on Venezuela's alleged links to subversives has been so uncomfortable to Chávez that he has warned that Spain's multibillion-dollar investments here could suffer. Critics in Venezuela have also been intimidated for speaking out about the FARC or ETA.

When Oswaldo Álvarez Paz, an opposition figure here, publicly expressed support for Velasco's investigation in a television interview, he was arrested and charged with spreading false information.

"This government does not endorse nor support any terrorist group," Chávez said in March soon after Velasco's indictment. "We have nothing to explain to anyone."

Chávez critics have long asserted that his government could be aiding groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah. But this is the first time judicial authorities outside Colombia have leveled accusations that link Venezuela's government with terrorist groups.

"There is nothing like this in the world, showing support for organizations that are declared terrorist groups," said Gustavo de Arístegui, a Spanish commentator and author of the book "Against the West," which details the anti-Western stand of Chávez and his allies, including Cuba's Fidel Castro and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Colombian authorities who have sifted through documents seized from three rebel commanders in 2008 and 2009 said they discovered that ETA operatives met with FARC guerrillas in rural camps from 2003 to 2008. Those camps were located outside Machiques, this cattle-raising town in Venezuela's northwestern Zulia state, as well as farther south in sparsely populated Apure state, according to Colombian government documents.

Colombian security service officials say ETA members taught bombmaking techniques to the explosives experts of at least five FARC units. Velasco, in his complaint, said that among those who facilitated the meetings in Venezuela was Cubillas, a Basque exile who had arrived in the country in 1989 and was absorbed by a small Basque community in Caracas. Cubillas, until recently an official in the state's National Land Institute, could not be reached for comment.

Ex-guerrillas speak

Two former FARC guerrillas who disarmed and now live freely in Colombia said in interviews that they saw ETA operatives in FARC camps outside Machiques in 2008.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity because they fear retribution for having cooperated with Colombian authorities, the former rebels described how Venezuelan military officers accompanied ETA operatives to the camps. The training, the rebels said, included how to build rockets and car bombs.

"They would talk about how they use them in Spain -- how they hid them under the cushions in cars," the older rebel, who is 23, said of the ETA explosives.

Colombian authorities said the FARC has in recent years begun activating car bombs with cellphones, a tactic long perfected by ETA. Authorities say they are also increasingly seeing remote-controlled land mines.

"The ramifications of this happening in territory we do not control is that the FARC increased its capacity to get new technology and modernize," said a high-ranking security services official in Colombia.

ETA benefited by taking advantage of Venezuela's isolated jungle camps to test weapons that could not be fired in Spain, said Florencio Domínguez, an expert on ETA in Bilbao, Spain. "They develop new tactics, new mechanisms, share experiences -- that's what ETA's terrorism entails, and it threatens the security of Spanish citizens," Domínguez said.

Velasco's criminal complaint also alleges that the FARC asked ETA to assassinate prominent Colombians in Spain. No one was killed, but the targets included President Uribe and Antanas Mockus, a former Bogota mayor now running for president in Colombia.

Colombian and Spanish authorities say that among those ETA closely tracked in Spain was former Colombian president Andrés Pastrana, who lived in Madrid for more than three years after he left office in 2002.

"President Chávez needs to give us an explanation of what happened," said Pastrana, who now lives in Bogota. "I left Colombia because of security, and now I learn that I was a target of ETA."

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Colombia: Stop Abuses by Paramilitaries’ Successor Groups

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Government must Protect Civilians, Prosecute Groups’ Members and Accomplices

February 3, 2010

(Bogotá) - Colombia needs to respond effectively to the violent groups committing human rights abuses that have emerged around the country in the aftermath of the flawed demobilization of paramilitary groups, Human Rights Watch says in a report released today.

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The 122-page report, "Paramilitaries' Heirs: The New Face of Violence in Colombia," documents widespread and serious abuses by successor groups to the paramilitary coalition known as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, AUC). The successor groups regularly commit massacres, killings, forced displacement, rape, and extortion, and create a threatening atmosphere in the communities they control. Often, they target human rights defenders, trade unionists, victims of the paramilitaries who are seeking justice, and community members who do not follow their orders. The report is accompanied by a multimedia presentation that includes photos and audio of some of the Colombians targeted by the successor groups.

"Whatever you call these groups - whether paramilitaries, gangs, or some other name - their impact on human rights in Colombia today should not be minimized," said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. "Like the paramilitaries, these successor groups are committing horrific atrocities, and they need to be stopped."

Based on nearly two years of field research, the report describes the successor groups' brutal impact on human rights in Colombia, highlighting four regions where the groups have a substantial presence: the city of Medellín, the Urabá region of Chocó state, and the states of Meta and Nariño. The successor groups pose a growing threat to the enjoyment of human rights in Colombian society. The most conservative estimates, by the Colombian National Police, put the groups' membership at over 4,000, and assert that they have a presence in 24 of Colombia's 32 departments. The groups are actively recruiting new members and despite arrests of some of their leaders, they are moving quickly to replace their leadership and expand their areas of operation.

The rise of the groups has coincided with a significant increase in the national rates of internal displacement from 2004 at least through 2007. Much of the displacement is occurring in regions where successor groups are active. In some areas, like Medellín, where the homicide rate has nearly doubled in the past year, the groups' operations have resulted in a dramatic increase in violence.

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The report documents multiple examples of successor group abuses, including the following:

• While a human rights defender was providing assistance to a victim of the paramilitaries at the victim's home in Antioquia, members of a successor group calling themselves the Black Eagles broke into the house, raped both women, and warned the rights defender to stop doing human rights work. She eventually had to flee town due to continued threats from the group.

• More than 40 people from the Pablo Escobar neighborhood of Medellín were forced to flee their homes between late 2008 and early 2009 as a result of killings and threats by the local armed group, which is partly made up of demobilized paramilitaries.

• In the southern border state of Nariño, most residents in three communities in the coastal municipality of Satinga were displaced after one of the successor groups (then using the name Autodefensas Campesinas de Nariño, or Peasant Self Defense Forces of Nariño) went into one of the towns, killed two young men, and reportedly caused the forced disappearance of a third.

The emergence of the successor groups was predictable, Human Rights Watch said, largely due to the Colombian government's failure to dismantle the paramilitary coalition's criminal networks during the demobilization process, between 2003 and 2006. The government's inadequate implementation of the demobilizations also allowed paramilitaries to recruit civilians to pose as paramilitaries for the demobilization, while keeping portions of their membership active. The report describes, for example, the North Block demobilization, where there is substantial evidence of fraud ordered by AUC leader Rodrigo Tovar (known as "Jorge 40").

The report also expresses concern over alleged toleration of successor groups' activities by some state officials and government security forces. Both prosecutors and senior members of the police said that such toleration was a real obstacle to their work. And in each of the cities and regions Human Rights Watch visited it heard repeated allegations of toleration of successor groups by security forces.

In Nariño, for example, one man complained that "the Black Eagles interrogate us, with the police 20 meters away... [Y]ou can't trust the army or police because they're practically with the guys." In Urabá, a former official said the police in one town appeared to work with the successor groups: "It's all very evident... The police control the entry and exit [of town] and ... they share intelligence." In Meta, an official said he received "constant complaints that the army threatens people, talking about how ‘the Cuchillos' [the main successor group in the region] are coming... In some cases, the army leaves and the Cuchillos come in."

Human Rights Watch said that the Colombian government has legal obligations to protect civilians from harm, prevent abuses, and ensure accountability for abuses when they occur.

But the government has failed to ensure that the police units charged with combating the groups, or the prosecutors charged with investigating them, have adequate resources. It has dragged its feet on funding for the Early Warning System of the Ombudsman's Office, which plays a key role in protecting the civilian population. State agencies have at times denied assistance to civilians who reported being displaced by successor groups. And the government has failed to take effective measures to identify, investigate, and punish state officials who allegedly tolerate the successor groups.

"The Uribe administration has failed to treat the rise of the successor groups with the seriousness the problem requires," Vivanco said. "The government has taken some steps to confront them, but it has failed to make a sustained and meaningful effort to protect civilians, investigate these groups' criminal networks, and go after their assets and accomplices."

Thailand Blocks Extradition of Viktor Bout, Held in Arms Sales to Colombia’s FARC Rebels

By THOMAS FULLER

BANGKOK — A Thai court stunned American officials here on Tuesday by rejecting the extradition of Viktor Bout, a Russian businessman who is accused of global arms trafficking.

The United States says Mr. Bout agreed to sell millions of dollars worth of weapons to agents posing as Colombian rebels intending to kill American pilots patrolling in the drug war.

A three-judge panel said that the case did not fall under Thailand’s extradition treaty with the United States for two main reasons. One, the country recognizes the rebels — the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC — as a political organization, not a terrorist group. Two, on the charge that Mr. Bout was conspiring to kill American citizens, one of the judges, Jitakorn Patanasiri, said, “A Thai court cannot judge a case regarding aliens killing aliens outside of Thailand.”

Thai government prosecutors, acting as proxies for their American counterparts, immediately said they would appeal. Mr. Bout would be freed only if an appeal was not filed within 72 hours.

James Entwistle, a diplomat in the United States Embassy in Bangkok, said he was “disappointed and mystified” by the decision. “We think the facts of the case, our extradition treaty and the relevant Thai law all clearly support extraditing Viktor Bout to the United States to stand trial on serious terrorism charges.”

Mr. Bout has denied any links to arms trafficking and told the judge during the proceedings earlier this year that he was being held in “extremely inhumane” conditions. He has argued that the undercover agents violated Thai law by apprehending him before calling the Thai police and carrying firearms in violation of Thai law.

After the ruling was read, Mr. Bout, 42, hugged his wife, and shook hands with his two lawyers. But he said little to reporters in the courtroom. “I’m not allowed to say anything,” he said.

Wearing a soiled prison uniform and leg irons that clanked across the courtroom floor, Mr. Bout hardly fit his accuser’s portrayal of him as one of the world’s most notorious weapons traffickers — or the Nicolas Cage character he supposedly inspired in the 2005 film “Lord of War.”

According to legal papers, Mr. Bout told undercover agents for the Drug Enforcement Administration that he could deliver 700 to 800 surface-to-air missiles, 5,000 AK-47 assault weapons, millions of rounds of ammunition, land mines, C-4 explosives and unmanned aerial vehicles, and that the weapons would be airdropped into the jungles of Colombia “with great accuracy.”

Thai officials say they have come under pressure from Russia, which has asked for custody of Mr. Bout, and the United States over the case. Judge Jitakorn prefaced the reading of the decision with what sounded like an apology: “Today there must be someone happy and someone sad.” The reading took so long — more than an hour — that Judge Jitakorn gestured to Mr. Bout to sit down halfway through.

Mark McDonald contributed reporting from Hong Kong.

U.S. Plan Raises Ire in Latin America

By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, August 8, 2009

BOGOTA, Colombia, Aug. 7 -- A U.S. plan to deploy troops and station aircraft at several Colombian military bases has generated controversy across Latin America, with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez warning that it could lead to war and the president of Brazil saying that he did not like the idea of an expanded U.S. presence in the region.

A senior State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said by phone from Washington on Friday that the plan would give the United States access to Colombian bases from which to carry out vital counter-drug surveillance flights over the Pacific, a conduit for cocaine smuggled to Mexico and on to the United States. "Our ability to have broad coverage in that area was important," he said.

But since Colombian authorities revealed details of the proposed agreement last month, Chávez has said the United States might use the bases as a platform for an invasion of his oil-rich country. "We're talking about the Yankees, the most aggressive nation in the history of humanity," Chávez said Wednesday in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital.

A woman in Rio wears a mask that reads in Spanish: "Get Uribe Out." Concerns about the U.S. anti-drug plan prompted Colombia's Uribe to visit other leaders. (By Ricardo Moraes -- Associated Press)

The reaction from Caracas was no surprise to Washington officials, whom Chávez frequently accuses of plotting against his government. But moderate, European-style leftist governments in South America, most of which have good relations with the United States, have also raised concerns that the proposed U.S. presence is greater than Washington needs for its anti-drug efforts.

Hurdle for Obama

That indignation poses a new challenge for the Obama administration, which has been trying to improve relations with governments that had openly opposed the Bush administration. But political analysts, as well as officials in Colombia, said the secretive nature of the talks between Washington and Bogota had proved counterproductive.

"There just didn't seem to be any serious consultation beforehand," said Michael Shifter, a Colombia expert at the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, adding that the controversy "was completely avoidable."

On Friday, President Obama tried to soothe nerves in Latin America, telling reporters in Washington that the United States was simply upgrading its security agreement with Colombia. "There have been those in the region who have been trying to play this up as part of a traditional anti-Yankee rhetoric," Obama said, adding, "We have no intent in establishing a U.S. military base in Colombia."

The concerns expressed in the region prompted Colombian President Álvaro Uribe to embark on a three-day South American trip this week to reassure fellow leaders, including populists such as Bolivia's Evo Morales and moderates such as Chile's Michelle Bachelet. Morales and Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner did not offer support for a Colombian-U.S. deal, but Bachelet and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva toned down their initial criticisms to say that the proposal is a sovereign matter.

Still, after Uribe met with Lula in Brasilia on Thursday, Brazil's foreign minister, Celso Amorim, told reporters that his country had asked Colombia to be more transparent about the proposed accord. "We will have to see if that Colombian transparency satisfies, or does not satisfy, our doubts," Amorim said. The plan was expected to be the main topic of discussion when Latin American officials meet in Ecuador on Monday for a regional defense summit.

Colombian authorities said last month that under the accord, which may be signed this month and would last 10 years, U.S. aircraft could be stationed at up to five Colombian air bases and U.S. naval vessels could dock at two Colombian ports, one on the Caribbean and the other on the Pacific. Up to 800 U.S. military personnel and 600 private contractors could use the bases, meeting a cap of 1,400 that was set in 2000 when Congress approved $1.3 billion in anti-narcotics aid for Colombia. As of June 19, there were 268 U.S. military personnel in Colombia and 308 civilian contractors.

The Uribe administration has stressed that the bases would remain under Colombian command, with U.S. missions requiring Colombian approval and base security handled by Colombian troops. U.S. planes would be unable fly over a third country unless the United States had a separate agreement with that country. "These are not American bases, but Colombian," Gen. Freddy Padilla, chief of the armed forces, said Tuesday at a summit with U.S. military officers in the coastal city of Cartagena. "But we will provide the possibility for them to use our installations."

U.S. military officers and specialists working for U.S. companies that carry out anti-drug operations already use several Colombian bases.

Colombian officials said the base that would have the biggest U.S. presence under the accord is Palanquero, in Puerto Salgar, a steamy river town a four-hour drive from Bogota. Hundreds of service members can be housed there, and its hangars can accommodate more than 100 aircraft.

End of Ecuadoran Deal

The idea of using Colombian bases comes as a decade-long U.S. presence ends at the coastal air base in Manta, Ecuador, which U.S. forces used to patrol the Pacific. Then-candidate Rafael Correa railed against the U.S. presence during his 2006 presidential campaign and, once in office, did not renew an operating agreement with Washington.

Correa's government also accused U.S. forces operating out of Manta of having helped the Colombians carry out the bombing of a Colombian rebel camp in Ecuador last year that killed two dozen guerrillas.

The senior State Department official said talks with the Uribe administration over use of Colombian bases began "long before" Ecuador decided to end the U.S. presence at Manta. "We thought it made sense," he said.

Colombia's vice minister for defense, Sergio Jaramillo, said in an interview Friday that officials have become increasingly concerned about the smuggling of cocaine into Mexico via speedboats and semi-submersible vessels operating out of clandestine Pacific ports. "One must not underrate the significance or danger of losing the capability that the U.S. had in Ecuador," he said.

Jaramillo said the planes that had been in Manta "were the ones that were giving us the intelligence to do the interdiction operations we were doing in the Pacific."

In Venezuela, though, Chávez scoffs at those arguments, his rhetoric ratcheting up in recent days since Colombia accused Venezuela of providing Colombian guerrillas with antitank rocket launchers.

Chávez denied the allegation and recalled his ambassador from Colombia. In the wake of the base controversy, he has announced an economic counteroffensive that includes suspending the participation of Colombia's state oil company in operations in Venezuela's richest oil belt. He also said plans to import 10,000 cars from Colombia had been called off and threatened to cut other Colombian imports.

"The only way this situation returns, let's say, to calm is for Colombia to refuse to give its territory to the United States," Chávez told reporters Thursday.

New Evidence of Venezuelan Aid for Colombian Rebels

By SIMON ROMERO

CARACAS, Venezuela — Despite repeated denials by President Hugo Chávez, Venezuelan officials have continued to assist commanders of Colombia’s largest rebel group, helping them arrange weapons deals in Venezuela and even obtain identity cards to move with ease on Venezuelan soil, according to computer material captured from the rebels in recent months and under review by Western intelligence agencies.

The materials point to detailed collaborations between the guerrillas and high-ranking military and intelligence officials in Mr. Chávez’s government as recently as several weeks ago, countering the president’s frequent statements that his administration does not assist the rebels. “We do not protect them,” he said in late July.

The new evidence — drawn from computer material captured from the rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC — comes at a low point for ties between Venezuela and Colombia. Mr. Chávez froze diplomatic relations in late July, chafing at assertions by Colombia’s government that Swedish rocket launchers sold to Venezuela ended up in the hands of the FARC. Venezuela’s reaction was also fueled by Colombia’s plans to increase American troop levels there.

“Colombia’s government is trying to build a case in the media against our country that serves its own political agenda,” said Bernardo Álvarez, Venezuela’s ambassador in Washington, describing the latest intelligence information as “noncorroborated.”

Mr. Chávez has disputed claims of his government’s collaboration with the rebels since Colombian forces raided a FARC encampment in Ecuador last year. During the raid, Colombian commandos obtained the computers of a FARC commander with encrypted e-mail messages that described a history of close ties between Mr. Chávez’s government and the rebel group, which has long crossed over into Venezuelan territory for refuge.

The newest communications, circulated among the seven members of the FARC’s secretariat, suggest that little has changed with Venezuela’s assistance since the raid. The New York Times obtained a copy of the computer material from an intelligence agency that is analyzing it.

One message from Iván Márquez, a rebel commander thought to operate largely from Venezuelan territory, describes the FARC’s plan to buy surface-to-air missiles, sniper rifles and radios in Venezuela last year.

It is not clear whether the arms Mr. Márquez refers to ended up in FARC hands. But he wrote that the effort was facilitated by Gen. Henry Rangel Silva, the director of Venezuela’s police intelligence agency until his removal last month, and by Ramón Rodríguez Chacín, a former Venezuelan interior minister who served as Mr. Chávez’s official emissary to the FARC in negotiations to free hostages last year.

In the message, Mr. Márquez discusses a plan by Mr. Rodríguez Chacín to carry out the deal near the Río Negro in Amazonas State in Venezuela. Mr. Márquez goes further, explaining that General Rangel Silva gave the arms dealers documents they could use to move around freely while in Venezuela.

Intelligence of this kind has been a source of tension between Colombia and Venezuela, with the government here claiming the information is false and used to further political ends. Colombian officials, by contrast, argue that the intelligence proves that the FARC survives in part on its ability to operate from Venezuela’s frontier regions.

The latest evidence, suggesting that the FARC operates easily in Venezuela, may put the Obama administration in a tough spot. President Obama has recently tried to repair Washington’s relations with Venezuela, adopting a nonconfrontational approach to Mr. Chávez that stands in contrast to the Bush administration’s often aggressive response to his taunts and insults.

But the United States and the European Union still classify the FARC as a terrorist organization. The Treasury Department accused General Rangel Silva and Mr. Rodríguez Chacín last year of assisting the FARC’s drug trafficking activities, opening the officials to freezes on their assets, fines and prison terms of up to 30 years in the United States. Venezuela has said the men are not guilty of those charges.

“We do not comment on intelligence matters,” said Noel Clay, a State Department spokesman, in relation to the latest captured communications. A spokesman from the Colombian Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the matter.

Computer records obtained in the Colombian raid in Ecuador last year appeared to corroborate the assertion that Venezuela helped the FARC acquire the Swedish-made rocket launchers at the heart of the latest diplomatic dispute between the two countries. The launchers were purchased by the Venezuelan Army in the late 1980s but captured in Colombia in combat operations against the FARC last year.

The FARC’s use of Swedish arms has an added dimension: the rebels kidnapped a Swedish engineer in Colombia in 2007, holding him hostage for nearly two years — during which he was reported to have suffered brain damage and paralysis from a stroke — before releasing him in March.

“The issue of these weapons is extremely serious for us,” said Tommy Stromberg, the political officer at the Swedish Embassy in Bogotá, the Colombian capital, which also oversees Sweden’s affairs in Venezuela. Mr. Stromberg said Venezuela had bought Swedish arms as recently as 2006. “We have asked Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry for clarification on how this happened, but have not had a response.”

The computer records from the raid in Ecuador last year also seem to match some of the information in the new communications under review by Western intelligence officials.

For example, a message obtained in the Ecuador raid and written in September 2007 contained an earlier reference to the arms deal discussed recently by the FARC. In the earlier message, Mr. Márquez, the rebel commander, referred to dealers he described as Australian, and went into detail about the arms they were selling, including Dragunov rifles, SA-7 missiles and HF-90M radios, the same items he discusses in the more recent communications.

Another file from the Ecuador raid mentioning an offer from the FARC to instruct Venezuelan officers in guerrilla warfare matches recently obtained material from a rebel commander, Timoleón Jiménez, that says the course took place. Other communications refer to FARC efforts to secure Venezuelan identity cards in a plan overseen by General Rangel Silva, the former Venezuelan intelligence chief.

In other material captured as recently as May, Mr. Márquez, the rebel commander, said Mr. Chávez had spoken personally with Mr. Jiménez, expressing solidarity for the FARC’s struggle. Then Mr. Márquez went into more mundane matters, referring to unspecified problems the FARC had recently encountered in La Fría, an area in Venezuela near the border with Colombia.

Increased U.S. Military Presence in Colombia Could Pose Problems With Neighbors

By SIMON ROMERO

CARACAS, Venezuela — A plan to increase the American military presence on at least three military bases in Colombia, Washington’s top ally in Latin America, is accentuating Colombia’s already tense relations with some of its neighbors.

Venezuela, Ecuador and Nicaragua, which are members of a leftist political alliance that is led by President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and backed by his nation’s oil revenues, have all criticized the plan, saying it would broaden the military reach of the United States in the Andes and the Caribbean at a time when they are still wary of American influence in the region.

Despite a slight improvement in Venezuela’s relations with the United States in recent months, Mr. Chávez has been especially vocal in lashing out at the plan. Speaking on state television here on Monday night, he put Venezuela’s diplomatic ties with Colombia under review, calling the plan a platform for “new aggression against us.”

Colombia’s foreign minister, Jaime Bermúdez, on Tuesday defended the negotiations, which are expected to produce an agreement in August, asking neighboring countries not to interfere in Colombia’s affairs. “We never expressed our opinion in what our neighbors do,” he said, pointing to Mr. Chávez’s attempts to strengthen ties with non-Western nations. “Not even when the Russian presence became known in Venezuelan waters, or with relations with China,” he added.

The United States has been negotiating the increase of military operations in Colombia in recent weeks, faced with Ecuador’s decision to end a decade-long agreement allowing E-3 AWACs and P-3 Orion surveillance planes to operate from the Manta Air Base on Ecuador’s Pacific Coast.

While American antidrug surveillance flights would sharply increase in Colombia, the world’s top producer of cocaine, the agreement would not allow American personnel to take part in combat operations in the country, which is mired in a four-decade war against guerrillas. A limit of 800 American military personnel and 600 American military contractors would also remain in place, officials involved in the talks said.

Still, depending on how the accord is put in place, American troop levels in Colombia could climb sharply. The United States currently has about 250 military personnel in the country, deployed largely in an advisory capacity to Colombia’s armed forces, William Brownfield, the United States ambassador to Colombia, said last week.

Colombia, which has already received more than $5 billion in military and antidrug aid from the United States this decade, has found itself isolated diplomatically as Mr. Chávez presses ahead with his efforts to expand Venezuela’s oil diplomacy while eroding American influence in the hemisphere.

Other countries chafe at Colombia for different reasons. Colombia’s diplomatic relations with Ecuador have soured since Colombian forces carried out a raid on a Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, rebel camp on Ecuadoran territory last year. A festering boundary dispute with Nicaragua has also made for tensions between Colombia and Nicaragua’s president, Daniel Ortega, an ally of Mr. Chávez.

But with Venezuela itself, Colombia remains locked in a complex game of interdependence.

Its sales of manufactured and agricultural goods to Venezuela remain resilient despite Mr. Chávez’s occasional outbursts directed at his ideological opposite, Colombia’s president, Álvaro Uribe. And faced with disarray in its oil industry, Venezuela relies on imports of Colombian natural gas, narrowing the possibility of a severe deterioration in ties between the two countries despite their sharply different views of cooperation with the United States.

Venezuela's Drug-Trafficking Role Is Growing Fast, U.S. Report Says

By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, July 19, 2009

BOGOTA, Colombia, July 18 -- A report for the U.S. Congress on drug smuggling through Venezuela concludes that corruption at high levels of President Hugo Chávez's government and state aid to Colombia's drug-trafficking guerrillas have made Venezuela a major launching pad for cocaine bound for the United States and Europe.

Since 1996, successive U.S. administrations have considered Venezuela a key drug-trafficking hub, the Government Accountability Office report says. But now, it says, the amount of cocaine flowing into Venezuela from Colombia, Venezuela's neighbor and the world's top producer of the drug, has skyrocketed, going from an estimated 60 metric tons in 2004 to 260 metric tons in 2007. That amounted to 17 percent of all the cocaine produced in the Andes in 2007.

The report, which was first reported by Spain's El Pais newspaper Thursday and obtained by The Washington Post on Friday, represents U.S. officials' strongest condemnation yet of Venezuela's alleged role in drug trafficking. It says Venezuela has extended a "lifeline" to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which the United States estimates has a hand in the trafficking of 60 percent of the cocaine produced in Colombia.

The report, scheduled to be made public in Washington on Monday, drew an angry response from Chávez, whose government has repeatedly clashed with the United States. Speaking to reporters in Bolivia on Friday, the populist leader characterized the report as a political tool used by the United States to besmirch his country. He also said the United States, as the world's top cocaine consumer, has no right to lecture Venezuela.

"The United States is the first narco-trafficking country," Chávez said, adding that Venezuela's geography -- particularly its rugged 1,300-mile border with Colombia -- makes it vulnerable to traffickers. He also asserted that Venezuela had made important gains in the drug war since expelling U.S. counter-drug agents in 2005, a measure the GAO says made Venezuela more attractive to Colombian traffickers.

"Venezuela has begun to hit narco-trafficking hard since the DEA left," Chávez said, referring to the Drug Enforcement Administration. "The DEA is filled with drug traffickers."

Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) commissioned the GAO study in February 2008, asking the nonpartisan agency to determine whether Venezuela was "in the process of becoming a narco-state, heavily dependent [on] and beholden to the international trade in illegal drugs."

In a statement about the GAO report, Lugar, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the findings "have heightened my concern that Venezuela's failure to cooperate with the United States on drug interdiction is related to corruption in that country's government." He said the report underscores a need for a comprehensive review of U.S. policy toward Venezuela.

The release of the report is expected to provide ammunition to some Republican lawmakers who have criticized the Obama administration's efforts to reinstate the deposed president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, a close ally of Chávez. U.S. diplomats have said that despite his ties to Chávez, Zelaya should be returned to power to serve the six months left in his term.

A Democratic aide in Congress who works on Latin American policy issues suggested that the call for a review of U.S. policy toward Venezuela could interfere with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's bid to improve relations with Caracas, which were badly frayed during the Bush years. "The administration inherited a messy bilateral relationship and deserves a chance to put it on a more even keel," the aide said.

The GAO report describes how cocaine produced in Colombia is smuggled into Venezuela via land and river routes, as well as on short flights originating from remote regions along Colombia's eastern border. Most of the cocaine is then shipped out on merchant vessels, fishing boats and so-called go-fast boats. Though most of it is destined for U.S. streets, increasing amounts are being sent to Europe, the report says.

The GAO contends that corruption in Venezuela, reaching from officers in the National Guard to officials in top levels of government, has contributed to the surge in trafficking.

In September, the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control designated three Venezuelan high-ranking officials, all close aides to Chávez, as "drug kingpins" for protecting FARC drug shipments and providing arms and funding to Colombian guerrillas. They are Hugo Armando Carvajal Barrios, director of the military's Intelligence Directorate; Henry de Jesús Rangel Silva, head of the Directorate of Intelligence and Prevention Services; and Ramón Rodríguez Chacín, former interior and justice minister.

News of the GAO report came as Colombian officials in Bogota released an internal FARC video in which the rebel group's second-in-command, Jorge Briceño, reads the deathbed manifesto, written in March 2008, by the then-supreme commander, Manuel Marulanda. In the video, seized in May from a FARC operative and obtained by the Associated Press, Marulanda stresses the strategic importance of "maintaining good political relations, friendship and confidence with the governments of Venezuela and Ecuador."

Marulanda's letter also laments that a trove of internal e-mails, many of them compromising Venezuelan and Ecuadoran officials, fell into the hands of Colombian authorities that month. Briceño, reading the letter to a group of guerrillas in a jungle clearing, announces that among FARC "secrets" that were lost is information about the "assistance in dollars" to Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa's 2006 presidential campaign.

Venezuela did not immediately respond to the video. But on Saturday, Correa, an ally of Chávez, denied receiving campaign funds from the FARC and suggested the video was a "setup."

"There is a setup to damage the image of the country and the government," he said in a radio address.

Colombia's Uribe Faces a New White House Approach Toward Latin America

By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, June 29, 2009

BOGOTA, Colombia -- In a White House ceremony in January, President George W. Bush awarded Colombian President Álvaro Uribe the Presidential Medal of Freedom and praised him for his "immense personal courage and strength of character" for taking on his country's fight against Marxist guerrillas.

On Monday, Uribe again arrives at the White House. But this time he will encounter an administration pushing to expand its alliances in Latin America and increasingly worried about Colombia's dismal human rights record, Colombia experts say.

Obama administration officials declined interview requests to discuss policy toward Colombia, a country that has received nearly $6 billion in mostly military aid since Uribe took office in 2002.

But four people who have met with policymakers in the Obama administration say the United States is concerned about the wiretapping and surveillance of Uribe's critics by an intelligence agency controlled by the presidency and reports that as many as 1,700 civilians have been killed by Colombian army units in what a preliminary United Nations investigation characterized as "cold-blooded, premeditated murder."

Administration officials also believe that democratic institutions are at risk as the Uribe government lobbies for a constitutional amendment to permit him to run for an unprecedented third term next year, said those who have met with aides to President Obama.

"I believe the Obama administration will question President Uribe on his human rights record and democracy," said one of the four people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. "And I don't think they will either mince words or hold back too much."

Analysts say a new, more guarded approach toward Colombia is part of a wider policy designed to repair the tarnished relationships the Bush administration had in Latin America. The strategy hinges on showing that the United States is not solely preoccupied with Colombia, Washington's closest ally in Latin America this decade. Uribe is a conservative, openly pro-American leader in a region marked by leftist presidents.

"The way the Bush administration left it was that Colombia and maybe El Salvador were the only significant friends we had left -- the only two who would work with us on everything, unconditionally," said Adam Isacson, a Colombia analyst at the Center for International Policy in Washington.

"One of the first priorities of the Obama administration was to increase the number of friends, and he's made overtures to Mexico, Chile and Brazil," Isacson added. "To Colombia, that's bad news because they become one of many friends, not the only friend."

Uribe is the third Latin American leader invited to the White House since Obama took office. The first two came from countries Obama has repeatedly praised, Brazil and Chile. Both of those countries have dynamic economies and governments that have initiated programs to deal with poverty. Colombia, too, is considered economically sound. Uribe's government is also popular here for putting rebel groups on the defensive.

But Uribe's seven years in office have also been characterized by scandal.

In the latest to transfix the nation, the attorney general's office is unraveling domestic spying carried out by the Department of Administrative Security, or DAS, against judges, opposition politicians, journalists and human rights workers. Four former DAS directors and more than 30 agents are under investigation, Attorney General Mario Iguarán said.

Investigators have turned up hundreds of documents showing how a secretive group in the DAS, called the G-3, even tailed the children of human rights workers, searched through the bank records of targets and looked for "unusual behavior (vices, lovers, etc.)" by those who were under surveillance.

Gustavo Gallón, director of the Colombian Commission of Jurists, which investigates rights abuses and has been critical of the government, learned that 30 agents were assigned to follow him, his two daughters, his parents and siblings. "This boggles the imagination," Gallón said. "They are following your children. What is the reason for that?"

Another target, Hollman Morris, a journalist known for his tough reports on Colombia's long guerrilla war, said he and his wife were stunned to read DAS documents describing how his two daughters, ages 8 and 5, were photographed by DAS agents. Ironically, Morris and Gallón had been assigned government bodyguards years ago because the state thought they could be assassinated.

Uribe administration officials have said the president had nothing to do with the scandal. But Colombia's inspector general's office is investigating three of Uribe's closest advisers.

Andrew Hudson, an investigator for New York-based Human Rights First, said the scandal shows that the president's rhetoric translated into a systematic policy designed to, at the very least, tarnish the image of government critics.

"The attorney general's recent investigation proves, for the first time, what human rights defenders have been saying for years: that instead of protecting them, the DAS engaged in 'intelligence offensives' against defenders," said Hudson, who has documented the imprisonment of rights workers in Colombia.

On Capitol Hill, an aide involved in Latin America policy said there is also concern about another scandal of "massive proportions" -- the killing of mostly poor farmers by Colombian army units in several states.

A special U.N. investigator, Philip Alston, called the killings a systematic practice by "significant elements" of the army. In a preliminary report, Alston said the soldiers killed young men and presented them as rebels killed in combat. Dozens of soldiers are under arrest, Alston said, but he worried that prosecutions could be thwarted.

The aide in the U.S. Congress, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak publicly, said key lawmakers have directly raised concerns with Uribe and other Colombian officials. Often, though, the response has been defensive, he said.

"I see this as an indicator that they just don't get it," he said.