New Chapter in a Dirty War

[Joanne98]

The heat has gone out of Colombia’s confrontation with neighboring Ecuador and Venezuela–for now.

After a handshake deal at a summit of Latin American leaders, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez pulled his troops back from a possible border confrontation with Colombia. Nevertheless, Colombia’s right-wing leader, Álvaro Uribe, remains the U.S. government’s close ally in its ongoing effort to destabilize Venezuela.

Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa and Chávez shook hands with Uribe at a summit of Latin American leaders in the Dominican Republic, winding down a crisis that erupted a week earlier when Colombia’s national police stormed across the border with Ecuador to kill the number-two leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Colombia’s assassination of Raúl Reyes, who was killed along with more than 20 other FARC fighters, was a calculated blow to negotiations with the FARC over the release of hostages held by the rebel group.

The talks were begun last year by Chávez, initially with approval from Uribe, who was under pressure to secure the release of hostages after a series of scandals linked his government to right-wing paramilitaries. But Uribe withdrew from the process months later, accusing Chávez of meddling in Colombia’s internal politics. Several hostages were released by the FARC into Venezuelan custody anyway.

Now, by eliminating Reyes, the FARC’s main negotiator for hostage releases, Uribe is hoping to gear up for another round of fighting in Colombia’s decades-long civil war. He has the full backing of the U.S., which has long been frustrated by Uribe’s past cordial relationship with Chávez.

But while Uribe postured as the defender of Colombia from terrorism, some 200,000 people marched in the capital city of Bogotá against state violence and terror by right-wing paramilitaries, an unprecedented event in a country where opposition is routinely met with violence. The march–part of protests held in every big Colombian city and in Colombian communities worldwide–was an answer to pro-Uribe marches held a month earlier against kidnapping by the FARC.

Adding to Uribe’s problems was the fact that almost every Latin American country condemned Colombia’s raid as a violation of Ecuador’s territorial sovereignty.

Only George Bush seized the moment to praise “Colombia’s democracy.” He pledged U.S. support against “the continuing assault by narco-terrorists as well as the provocative maneuvers by the regime in Venezuela.”

To further please their backers in the U.S., Colombia’s armed forces released information from a computer hard drive captured in the border raid that supposedly provided evidence that Chávez had funneled $300 million to the FARC, and that the rebel group was using the funds to develop a radioactive “dirty bomb.”

A few reporters, including Juan Forero of the Washington Post and National Public Radio, lapped this up, but unnamed U.S. intelligence officials told ABC News that such reports should be treated with “extreme skepticism.”

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/03/new-chapter-in-a-dirty-war/

[judasdisney]

1. Only Latin Americans Know What A "Dirty War" Is

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_War

Thanks for this article

[MasonJar]

2. Just get rid of Bush/Cheney and Columbia can and will damn well leave

Venezuela alone.