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Colombia in cold as tensions escalate



By Upstream staff 

Latin America scrambled to defuse a three-nation crisis that threatens the region's stability after Venezuela and Ecuador cut diplomatic ties with Colombia and ordered troops to their border with the country.

The Organisation of the American States will hold a crisis session in Washington today to press for a negotiated end to the dispute, which erupted after a weekend raid by Colombian troops into Ecuador resulted in the death of Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebel leader Raul Reyes and 20 other guerrillas.

Ecuador's President Rafael Correa will also start a five-nation tour of the region to lobby for support against what he calls a premeditated violation of sovereignty.

"This is not a bilateral problem, it's a regional problem," Correa told Mexican television. "Should this set a precedent, Latin America will become another Middle East."

Latin American governments generally lined up to condemn conservative Colombian President Alvaro Uribe for sending troops and warplanes over the border in an attack on a jungle camp that killed a senior FARC rebel.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, a former guerrilla and a close leftist ally of Venezuela and Ecuador and who has a territorial dispute with Colombia, accused Uribe of becoming a threat to Latin America.

The region's diplomatic heavyweight, Brazil, demanded Uribe apologise to Correa. It also worked on the crisis with Argentina, whose president will visit Venezuela tomorrow.

"This conflict ... is beginning to destabilise regional relations," Marco Aurelio Garcia, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's foreign policy adviser, told Reuters.

"We are mobilising all of Brazil's diplomatic resources and those of other South American capitals to find a lasting solution."

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the three countries to exercise restraint and address their concerns "in the spirit of dialogue and co-operation that has traditionally characterised their relations", his spokeswoman said in a statement issued in Geneva just before he left for New York.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has negotiated the release this year of rebel hostages, called Reyes' death a "cowardly assassination" by a US-backed president who did not want more captives freed.

Chavez and Correa expelled Colombia's diplomats from their capitals yesterday.

Colombia also fueled the tensions by accusing Chavez of funding Latin America's oldest insurgency - a charge denied by Venezuela.

Despite the three leaders' brinkmanship and the risk of military missteps, political analysts said a conflict was unlikely.

Chavez, the leader of a growing bloc of Latin American leftist presidents, may fire up his supporters by challenging Uribe but he can ill afford to lose food imports from Colombia as he combats shortages in his Opec nation, analysts told Reuters.


Tuesday, 04 March, 2008, 10:19 GMT  | last updated: Tuesday, 04 March, 2008, 10:38 GMT

Crisis point: Colombia launched a cross-border raid into Ecuador over the weekend, killing a FARC leader
 

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