Colombia: Chávez tied to FARC

http://www.miamiherald.com/top_stories/story/442995.html

Colombia's police chief said recovered computer files link Venezuela's president to FARC payments and other questionable deals.

Ecuadorean soldiers wait Monday for a helicopter that will take them to Angostura in northeast Ecuador. Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa on Sunday ordered the expulsion of Colombia's ambassador to Ecuador and mobilized troops to the border with Colombia, after Colombian security forces killed a senior commander of Colombia's largest guerrilla group just inside Ecuadorean territory.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez gave Colombia's FARC guerrillas $300 million this year and accepted some $150,000 from the leftist rebels in the early 1990s, according to explosive allegations by Colombia's police chief.

Gen. Oscar Naranjo made those and other allegations of FARC involvement with drug shipments and uranium based on materials discovered in one of three computers captured when Colombian troops raided a rebel camp in Ecuador on Saturday.

The Ecuadorean and Venezuelan governments broke diplomatic relations with Colombia Monday, a day after both countries ordered troop reinforcements to their borders with Colombia.

Both borders were reported relatively normal Monday, although trade across the Venezuela-Colombia frontier was partially halted. The commander of the 4th Armored Division said he was still preparing to send two armored brigades and a parachute brigade. Each brigade has about 250 men.

Naranjo said it was unclear whether the $300 million was a ransom payment for the six high-profile Colombian hostages recently released by the FARC to Chávez. He said the only thing clear was that Venezuela paid ``to support the terrorist cause.''

CHAVEZ `GRATEFUL'

The computer files also show Chávez was ''grateful'' for the roughly $150,000 the FARC delivered to him when he was in prison for a 1992 failed coup attempt, he added. The leftist Chávez has long expressed sympathy for the FARC.

Venezuela quickly denied the allegations. ''We are used to the Colombian government's lies,'' Vice President Ramón Carrizalez Rengifo said Monday. ``They're capable of inventing anything in an attempt to excuse their violation of Ecuadorean territory.''

Colombia also released copies of what it said were files in the computer owned by the top FARC leader known as Raúl Reyes showing that Ecuadorean Interior Minister Gustavo Larrea met with the FARC leadership and promised to appoint friendly officials to the Ecuador-Colombia frontier.

Late Monday, the Associated Press reported that Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa said his government had been in ''very advanced'' talks with the guerrillas to free 12 hostages including three American contractors and former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt. Correa said Colombia's military action thwarted the negotiations, the AP said.

''Everything was foiled by the hands of the warmongers and authoritarians,'' the AP quoted Correa as saying.

Other Reyes computer materials showed the FARC's role in a 700-kilo sale of cocaine and discussions with Venezuela about a transfer of weapons, the police chief said, as well as the FARC's purchase of 50 kilos of uranium, showing they were taking steps to become ``global terrorists.''

Naranjo did not release copies of the files relating to the Chávez payments, drug shipments or uranium but said Colombia would seek international forensic experts from the Organization of American States to verify the computer materials. He denounced the files as clear evidence that Venezuela and Ecuador don't just have warm relations with the narcoterror group, but alliances.

The memos ''unmask a web of relations and links with the FARC and a series of governments and personalities -- some public, some sinister -- that are plotting against Colombia,'' he said.

Larrea acknowledged he met with Reyes in January in a country that was neither Colombia nor Ecuador but said it was strictly to negotiate the release of hostages, the Ecuadorean president's office said. Ecuador also vehemently denied posting FARC-friendly border officers.

''There is no accord of any kind with the FARC,'' Larrea said. ``On the contrary, we told them Ecuador is sovereign . . . and we asked them not to cross the Ecuadorean border, because if they did, we would respond militarily.''

A furious Correa blasted the Colombian raid into his country, saying the neighbor's military leaders and President Alvaro Uribe ``are lying to Ecuador and lying to the world.''

Correa said evidence shows the rebels were shot in the back and in their underwear, suggesting they were killed in their sleep and not in hot pursuit from the Colombian side of the border as Bogotá claims.

The Colombian raid and its aftermath amount to one of the most serious international crises in South America since Peru and Ecuador fought a brief border war in 1995.

On Sunday, Chávez ordered 10 battalions, including tank units, to his border with Colombia and Ecuador mobilized 3,200 troops to its border. Colombia said Monday it would not reinforce its own sides of the frontiers.

Normally, a battalion would have 600 troops.

Alejandro García, a member of the city council in the Venezuelan border town of San Antonio del Táchira, said heavy cargo was not being allowed across the border but that there was no evidence of increased troop presence in the area.

OTHER FINDINGS

Naranjo said other information found in Reyes' computer included:

• Venezuelan Interior and Justice Minister Ramón Rodríguez Chacín also met with Reyes.

• Top FARC leader Manuel ''Sureshot'' Marulanda wrote a letter to Chávez saying, ``We, the FARC, will always be ready, in the case of gringo aggression, to lend our modest knowledge in defense of the Bolivarian revolution.''

• Ecuador was trying to negotiate for the release of high profile hostages, including Pablo Emilio Moncayo, a Colombian soldier held for 11 years whose father did a cross-country protest on foot last year.

• Hostage Ingrid Betancourt, a former Colombian presidential candidate, has a ''volcanic temper'' and is rude to her captors.

• The FARC's sale of 700 kilos of cocaine for $1.5 million.

Miami Herald correspondents Frances Robles and Pablo Bachelet contributed to this report from Miami and Washington. Special correspondents Phil Gunson and Sibylla Brodzinski contributed from Caracas and Bogotá.
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