Venezuela Still Aids Colombia Rebels, New Material Shows

Richard · 08-03-2009, 06:50

It's time for this clown (Chavez) to become something useful for a change - like dressing him in a black beret with red star and using his lifeless form to fertilize my flower beds.

Richard's $.02

Quote:

Venezuela Still Aids Colombia Rebels, New Material Shows
Simon Romero, NYT, 2 Aug 2009

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.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/03/wo...html?ref=world

incarcerated · 08-06-2009, 01:50

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp...3tkXL757R6ehEQ

Venezuela to buy Russian arms, tanks: Chavez
(AFP) – 4 hours ago

CARACAS — President Hugo Chavez said Venezuela would purchase dozens of Russian tanks, in a move signaling growing military ties between the two countries that have frequently clashed with Washington.

"It will be a major arms agreement to increase our defense capability," the Venezuelan leader told reporters, noting that he hoped to ink other agreements on agriculture, oil and mining during his visit to Moscow in mid-September.

Between 2005 and 2007, Moscow and Caracas signed 12 arms deals worth a total 4.4 billion dollars. Venezuela has acquired 24 Sukhoi fighter planes, 50 combat helicopters and 100,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles. In 2008, it secured a one-billion-dollar loan for the purchase of new weaponry.

Under the new deal, Venezuela would buy a modern battalion of "30 to 40" Russian-made BMP-3, T-72 and MPR tanks, Chavez said following a telephone conversation with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

"Our army will continue to grow," vowed Chavez, who is leading a leftist surge in Latin America and repeatedly lambasts the United States for perceived "imperialist" policies in the region.

Chavez denounced Colombia's plans to open seven bases on its soil to the US military to boost Washington's counternarcotics operations in the region, calling them "a threat."

"I do not want to spend a penny on arms, and that is what I did in the early years of the government... But the (US) empire wanted to disarm us and if not for Russia, we would be virtually unarmed," he said.

Bogota's plans have been met with fierce opposition in South America, prompting Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, a close US ally, to undertake a regional tour this week to tamp down the criticism....

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From the Venezuelan press:

http://www. vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=82492

PRAVDA: USA to topple Venezuela's Chavez through "indirect approach strategy"

Published: Monday, August 03, 2009
Russia's PRAVDA (Vadim Trukhachev): a political scandal, capable to develop into a great conflict, has burst out in South America. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, known for his anti-American sentiments, decided to freeze the relations with Colombia, a close US ally in the region. Venezuela was outraged by accusations presented by Colombian vice president Francisco Santos on July 27. The latter was quoted as saying that the Swedish anti-tank weapons found their way to FARC rebels, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Venezuela supposedly bought those arms from Sweden during the 1980s.
Moreover, Colombia is worried by appearance radical Shiite movement Hezbollah in Venezuela and the government's inaction regarding the issue of drug trafficking.
....Experts hold an opinion that the USA tries to discredit Chavez and conducts an information war against him in order to topple the stubborn Venezuelan President.

It goes without saying that the USA is not going to send troops to Venezuela ... the USA acts indirectly through its ally ... military experts call it the indirect approach strategy.

http://newsfromrussia.com/world/asia...sa_venezuela-0

incarcerated · 08-07-2009, 23:24

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0806/p02s23-usfp.html

Chávez rages at US plan to boost antidrug ops in Colombia

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has agreed to host the Pentagon's narcotics-interdiction flight operations, which were recently kicked out of Ecuador.
By Howard LaFranchi | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
from the August 6, 2009 edition
Washington - South America's left-right ideological tensions are flaring once again, this time over a US military plan to beef up its presence in Colombia.

Washington's best ally in the region, President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia, has agreed to host the Pentagon's narcotics-interdiction flight operations. Those operations were recently kicked out of Ecuador by leftist President Rafael Correa after a 10-year contract for use of the Manta air base came up for renewal.

The new plan, which has been quietly negotiated, is causing a storm across South America at a time of stepped-up arms deals and hushed military contacts involving not just the United States but Russia and Iran as well....

The US interdiction center, operated by more than 200 American personnel, flew its last surveillance flights out of Ecuador's Manta air base last month. President Correa's decision to evict the Americans was hailed by the leftist president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, as a victory for South American sovereignty and independence from American imperialism.

Now, President Chávez is blasting the plan to relocate the drug operations to Colombia – a neighbor whose relations with Venezuela have seriously deteriorated in recent years. He sees it as a belligerent and destabilizing move.

The stepped-up American military presence in Colombia "could be the start of a war in South America," Chávez told reporters Wednesday. "We're talking about the Yanquis, the most aggressive nation in human history."

In the meantime, Colombia has recently found additional evidence that Chávez's government has contacts with and provides occasional harbor to Colombia's Marxist FARC rebels, who profit from the drug trade.

The US already has about 300 military personnel in Colombia under the decade-old antinarcotics cooperation agreement called Plan Colombia. According to the agreement, the number of US military personnel in Colombia cannot top 800. US officials have refused to comment on what they say are ongoing negotiations, but the new plan is said to include the use of several bases in Colombia and additional arms sales....

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http://www.reuters.com/article/ameri.../idUSN07411579

Obama denies US creating military bases in Colombia

Fri Aug 7, 2009 5:03pm EDT
WASHINGTON, Aug 7 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Friday denied the United States is planning to set up military bases in Colombia as part of an upgraded security agreement with the South American nation.

"There have been those in the region who have been trying to play this up as part of a traditional anti-Yankee rhetoric. This is not accurate," Obama told Hispanic media reporters....