Pubdate: Fri, 01 Dec 2000 Source: Miami Herald (FL) Copyright: 2000 The Miami Herald Contact: One Herald Plaza, Miami FL 33132-1693 Fax: (305) 376-8950 Website: http://www.herald.com/ Forum: http://krwebx.infi.net/webxmulti/cgi-bin/WebX?mherald Author: Juan O. Tamayo COLOMBIA-VENEZUELA TIES ON BRINK OF CRISIS U.S.-Aided Drug War Imperiled BOGOTA, Colombia -- Rising frictions between Colombia and Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chavez have pushed relations to the brink of a crisis and cast a new shadow over a U.S.-financed Colombian offensive against drug traffickers. Both countries called home their ambassadors for ``consultations'' this week and President Andres Pastrana of Colombia ordered his highest foreign policy body, the Foreign Relations Advisory Commission, to review the feud. Bogota media have been filled with reports and opinion columns accusing Chavez of backing Colombia's leftist guerrillas, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC, and National Liberation Army, or ELN. Worried U.S. officials say the tensions could help undermine Plan Colombia, Pastrana's ambitious plan to attack his nation's cocaine and heroin industries with the help of a $1.3 billion U.S. aid package. ``We hope this will not be permanent,'' Under Secretary of State Thomas Pickering told reporters, ``because obviously it takes a strong amount of international cooperation to deal with these particularly difficult problems.'' Setting off the crisis was the decision by the Chavez government to invite a top FARC official, Olga Marin, to address a meeting last week of a Latin American parliamentary group held in Venezuela's National Assembly. Venezuela's foreign minister, Jose Vicente Rangel, said the invitation was part of his government's support for Pastrana's 2-year-old peace talks with the FARC. But his Colombian counterpart, Guillermo Fernandez de Soto, called it ``an unsolicited intervention in issues that Colombians must decide.'' Rangel said he wants to restore a ``climate of respect'' between the two nations and added that Pastrana and Chavez could meet this weekend, during Mexican President-elect Vicente Fox's inauguration, to discuss the crisis. But Fernandez de Soto made it clear the Marin invitation was only the latest in a series of recent brushes between two countries that share a 1,376-mile land border and have a history of rivalries going back 170 years. Chavez has denied repeated media reports that he has sent weapons and money to the FARC and ELN and meets regularly with rebel officials in Caracas, in effect lending legitimacy to the Marxist rebels. But he has steadly criticized Plan Colombia as the ``Vietnamization'' of Colombia's civil war, and Sunday blamed his neighbor's violence on ``a rancid Colombian oligarchy that does not understand peace.'' In a slap at the Pastrana government's failure to control much of its own territory, Rangel has said he would be right in talking to the Colombian rebels because ``you have to talk with whoever really rules.'' Caracas officials have long blocked Colombian truck traffic across the border, arguing security concerns, and they canceled a recent meeting with senior Colombian military officers at the last minute without explanation. Venezuelan security forces have refused to accept several recent waves of Colombian refugees fleeing the violence here, forcing them to return home even when refugee organizations complained that they could be killed. Pastrana government officials were also miffed last month when Venezuela barred a U.S. Coast Guard cutter from the Gulf of Venezuela, a Caribbean body of water shared by Colombia and its neighbor. More alarmingly, Bogota officials have been complaining since October about Venezuelan army incursions into Colombian border areas, apparently in ``hot pursuit'' of alleged Colombian cattle rustlers. Venezuelan troops torched five houses in the border hamlet of Tres Bocas Oct. 13 and a month later returned to detain four Colombians suspected of drug trafficking, according to the Foreign Ministry in Bogota. U.S. narcotics experts say Venezuela is a significant transit route for Colombian cocaine headed for the U.S. and European markets, accounting for some 100 metric tons of exports per year by some estimates. Adding to the concerns here, the respected Bogota news weekly Cambio reported recently that Colombian troops had opened fire Oct. 1 on Venezuelan soldiers spotted well inside the Colombian border, mistaking them for guerrillas, killing one and wounding two. Cambio also reported that a Venezuelan army general had met secretly with senior FARC officials inside Colombia to negotiate the release of six cattle ranchers kidnapped in Venezuela by the rebels and taken to Colombia. Colombia's Defense Ministry and National Police have declined all comment on the Cambio reports, but one army officer said the incidents were hushed up to avoid fanning the fires of confrontation with Chavez. - ---